


The Danseur & The DJ

by volleydorkscentral



Series: Merde for Luck - dance!au [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Don't copy to another site, Fluff and Smut, HIGHLY UNDER NEGOTIATED CHOKING KINK, Kyoutani really is a soff boi and you can never tell me otherwise, M/M, Merde for Luck Spin-Off, Morning After, Multiple Orgasms, Panic Attacks, Porn with Feelings, Rimming, Shower Sex, Soft and tender after care, and Kyou has lots of feelings, and Yahaba shows him how to handle them, but also thank you, casual meeting of BokuAka, cause my forest wife is a thirsty hoe, so you're welcome, this is really just gratuitous smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-03-06 09:08:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 44,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18847948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volleydorkscentral/pseuds/volleydorkscentral
Summary: (Merde for Luck Ch.16 Spin-Off)Ballet dancer Yahaba learns of the existence of the most handsome man in the world, Kyoutani, and bails out of ballet class to go find him and satisfy all his urges.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yikescaninot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikescaninot/gifts).



> _Minor_ MfL spoilers if you read that; if not, and you're just here for the KyouHaba smut, then read on. This will be a ~~four~~ MANY parter, with a little bit of plot and _feelings_ in later chapters. 
> 
> UPDATE: HAHAHAHA so it got longer. It's a lot of smut at first then _lots of feelings with more smut_ later on. :D
> 
> Thanks @yikescaninot for plotting this with me. And for turning me on to KyouHaba (ಠ ͜ʖಠ)

Yahaba stretched on the floor, listening to his teacher Akaashi tell Sugawara about the club he’d been to a few days ago with his boyfriend. Yahaba was only a little jealous of Akaashi’s friendship with Suga — he liked both of the men and honestly wished he could be as close with them as they were with each other… but he didn’t think that would happen anytime soon. They were thick as thieves, and it was hard to intrude.

“So they won?” Suga asked, leaning over to look at Akaashi’s phone.

“The first part of the competition, yeah,” Akaashi told him. “Here, look.” He touched the screen on his phone and the phone started playing a loud, heavy song. Yahaba sat up from his split to lean over their shoulders to look. Akaashi saw him, and pulled the phone closer.

On screen it was a colorfully lit dance club, with a group of dancers doing a routine in the middle of a huge crowd. They were good, and fun to watch, but something drew Yahaba’s eye from the dancers — someone standing up at the booth surrounded by larger than life speakers.

At the soundboard was a small man, his hands dancing over the keys, and beside him, large headphones halfway around his neck, leaning over and pressing a few buttons for the smaller man, was the most handsome creature Yahaba had ever laid eyes on.

He gasped, “Who’s that?”

Akaashi glanced back at him, raising his eyebrows. “Who?”

Yahaba pointed, poking the man’s head with his finger. “That guy. Not the little one.”

“Oh… uhm…” Akaashi shrugged. “I’m not sure. He’s the DJ there, I think.”

Yahaba stood, stumbling a bit in his haste. “Where’s that club?”

Akaashi blinked at him, stunned. “It’s on Hawthorne.”

“Great, thanks!” Yahaba shouted as he raced across the room to get his bag, shuffling out of his dance clothes and pulling on jeans, wishing he had brought sexier clothes. He hadn’t thought he’d be searching out a handsome devil tonight, though.

“Wait!” Akaashi shouted, standing and chasing after him, grabbing his arm at the door. “Where are you going? We’re about to start class.”

Yahaba tugged on his tank top and dug around his bag for his street shoes. “Dude, you know I love your classes,” he looked up at Akaashi, eyes wide, “but it’s been over a year since I’ve had sex. I need ass more than I need class.”

Akaashi blinked at him, laughing a bit. “Uh… okay. Be… careful, I guess?”

“Thanks!” Yahaba said, rushing out, then stopping dead in his tracks when he realized he had nowhere to put his bag. He raced back in and threw his bag in the back room, hoping it’d be okay there until next class, and ran out again, waving his arm wildly until a cab pulled up beside him and he threw himself in.

 

* * *

 

 

At the club, he paid to get in and slipped through the crowd, searching for the sound system, and finding it immediately. He sucked in a breath — the man was _there._ Right there. People jostled him as he tried to make his way towards the raised platform, closer and closer until he was in directly in front of it. Several people near him were dancing lewdly, and he copied them, only much better. He liked dancing — all forms of it. He knew he was handsome, and knew how to make his body move in suggestive ways. He kept his eyes on the DJ — dark hair, sharp eyes, swift hands — trying to get his attention by his gaze alone.

It worked! Yahaba smiled — dragging his tongue along his lower lip as he spread his hands up his belly, pulling his shirt up to reveal the pale flat plane of his stomach. The DJ’s lips quirked up in a half smile, barely noticeable except that the music flared a bit louder, whatever mix he was doing thrumming into a steadier, pulsing beat.

Then he looked away and Yahaba frowned to himself, then jerked away as someone else touched his stomach. He batted the person away and stepped closer to one of the other platforms on the dance floor, raised high enough that several people could stand out.

A large, shirtless man held out his hand to Yahaba and he took it, climbing up and allowing the man to pull their hips together. Yahaba smiled at him, leaning into the hands on his hips and bending backwards, his arms a lovely arc over his body as he bent his spine backwards — and caught the eye of the DJ again, upside down and grinning. Yahaba ran his hands over his throat, down his body, then leaned up when the man he was dancing with gripped his wrists.

The music changed again, bleeding into a high pitched, suggestive sounding song. It had a quick beat, and the man and Yahaba danced, grinding their bodies together, the man sliding his hands up and down Yahaba’s sides, until his fingers hooked into his pants, tugging them almost open.

Yahaba laughed, the sound lost in the loud, full air of the club. He twisted, turning his back on the man so he could lean against him, the heat of the man seeping through his tank top and making Yahaba consider, for a moment, going home with this one instead.

But as he raised his hands behind him, tangling his fingers in the man’s sweat slick hair and feeling the man’s mouth on the back of his throat, Yahaba caught the eye of the DJ again — and this time he knew the man was _watching him._ So Yahaba closed his eyes, dropped his head, and let his body show the DJ exactly what wanted to do with him. He imagined the man he was dancing with was the DJ — the hands that slid over his hips were the DJ’s, the mouth at his throat and his shoulder the DJ’s mouth.

Suddenly, the man jerked his hips hard against Yahaba’s, yanking him from his imagination. “Hey!” he snapped, turning slightly to glare at the man.

The man was flushed with sweat, his eyes slightly hazy with lust and liquor, mouthing at Yahaba’s nape until he pushed him away. “What the fuck?!” the man snarled. The man grabbed at his wrist and Yahaba slapped it away, snorting with derision, and hopping down from the platform to get away from him. Dammit, the DJ wasn’t watching him anymore, focused on his knobs and dials.

Yahaba was a little out of breath, his heart racing in his chest, fluttering, as he walked towards the bar tucked in the corner. He perched on a stool, ordering a drink to quench his thirst. Periodically he would glance over at the DJ’s booth, eying the DJ and letting his imagination run wild.

And wild it ran.

It ran so much and so far that he didn’t immediately notice when the DJ was gone. In fact, it took a triple take for him to realize it. He sat straight up, like a meerkat, and whipped around to the bartender. “Where’d the DJ go?!” he demanded frantically.

The girl was shaking a mixer and glanced up at the booth too. “Oh, his shift is over, I think.”

Yahaba blinked. “Is there a back door?”

She squinted at him. “Do you know him?”

“Yeah,” Yahaba said quickly, lying through his teeth, “he just forgot we were supposed to meet.”

She shook her head. “Well, he just left so…”

Yahaba slapped money on the counter and jumped up so fast he tripped off his stool, almost falling flat on his face. He raced towards the door, pushing through people and bursting out the front door. People gave him strange looks. He studiously ignored them. Turning this way and that, he looked around, searching for — ah! There, walking down the street away from the club.

“Hey!” he shouted, but the man didn’t stop — the headphones covering his ears blocked out sound. Yahaba stopped behind him, hands waving uselessly as he went through several scenarios in his head (grabbing the guy’s arm — bad idea, might get punched; taking a fist full of his jacket — also punched; pulling the headphones off — very punched) and he finally settled for tapping on the man’s shoulder.

The DJ stopped, narrowing his eyes as he turned to look at Yahaba. He made a noise in his throat — half a growl and half a question.

Yahaba grinned. “Hi.” He pointed to the headphones, miming taking them off until the man did, looping them around his neck. “I liked your, mhm, _beats_.” He said with a smile.

The DJ nodded, his voice a low rumble as he spoke, “Sure.”

“Do — mhm, do you want to get dinner, maybe?” Yahaba asked. “Maybe… after, could get, y’know, coffee?” He reached out and touched the zipper of the man’s jacket, tugging it down a little to reveal the tight blue shirt he wore which clung to his toned chest. Yahaba felt himself squirm a little at the thought of what was under that shirt… and those tight, tight, _tight_ pants. His mouth might have watered — just a bit. “Or skip all those things and go somewhere private?” He didn’t need romance, or love, or anything as sentimental as all that. He needed to be _fucked_.

The DJ raised both his eyebrows a moment, before they lowered over his eyes and he pushed Yahaba’s hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

Yahaba laughed. “Why not?”

“I saw you dancing —”

“Then you know what I want.”

“— and I don’t think —”

“Want me to show you up close?”

The DJ stopped, scowling at him. “Stop.” He stepped back. “I’m not doing this with some prissy—”

“Hey, now.”

“Prancy, preppy creampuff —”

Yahaba gasped, “Creampuff?”

“Who probably isn’t worth my time.”

Yahaba held up a finger. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

DJ’s eyebrow raised, looking bored. “ _You?_ I doubt it.”

Yahaba stepped closer to him, they were of a height so their faces were indeed _very_ close, and he lifted his leg in a slow _développé,_ showing the control he had over his muscles, and placed his leg over the man’s shoulder, standing on his toe and shifting his hips so he could hook his knee over his shoulder. Both DJ’s eyebrows shot up and his hands automatically came to rest on Yahaba’s hips — one of them anyway — the other gripping the underside of his thigh, squeezing slightly at the muscle there. “Take me somewhere and fuck me,” Yahaba said in his best seductive voice — which was _quite good_ , low and thrumming through his chest.

The DJ eyed him for a long moment, his fingers flexing on Yahaba’s legs, then he glanced around, seeing they were alone on the street, and stepped closer, picking Yahaba up and shoving him against the closest wall. Yahaba gasped, which turned to a low moan when the man pressed their bodies close, the heat of him could be felt through every layer of clothing. “I don’t think you can handle me,” the man said, his voice low and rough, his eyes alight with lust.

Yahaba’s body trembled, his heart shoving blood _way down_ so fast that he got a little dizzy. Thank God the DJ was holding him up. “I think I can,” he said breathlessly, his own hands reaching out and sliding up the man’s chest to hook behind his neck. “I _really_ think I can.”

DJ’s eyes tightened in a smile, and he tilted his head, so their lips were a mere inches apart. His breath was hot against Yahaba’s lips, making his insides tingle. “I’ll take you home and fuck you,” he said, and Yahaba shuddered with arousal, “but you have to understand… We won’t stop until _I’m_ satisfied.”

Yahaba nodded, feeling frantic. “Yeah, sure.”

DJ leaned closer, his mouth against Yahaba’s ear. “Promise?

“ _Yes._ ”

The DJ bit him then, the sensitive skin just under his ear, until Yahaba moaned and melted into the man’s arms. Yahaba turned his head to retaliate, sinking his teeth into the man’s ear and the man _growled_ at him.

“Your place?” Yahaba gasped, when he could form words.

“Come on,” DJ said, pulling away, watching with rapt attention as Yahaba lowered his leg. He hooked his fingers over Yahaba’s neck and pulled him down the street, possessive in his touch, fingers pressing into the bruise he’d just marked under Yahaba’s ear. “I live close.”

As they walked, Yahaba tried to breathe in the cool air of the night to clear his head. “What’s your name?” he asked, remembering his manners. “I’m Shigeru.” He thought first names were appropriate considering they were about to be overly familiar with each other.

The DJ eyed him for a moment, as if debating whether or not to give his name, then said, “Kentarou Kyoutani.”

Yahaba grinned — he’d gotten _both_ names. Easier to find if he never got his number. If the sex was good.

He blinked, suddenly worried. What if the sex was bad? Then he’d be even _more_ frustrated. That would be _disastrous._


	2. Chapter 2

Their walk was silent and swift, Kyoutani stomping along with his hands in his pockets until he turned down a narrow alley and led Yahaba to a side door, up a narrow set of stairs, and into an apartment on the third floor. Yahaba saw a pile of shoes beside the door so he took a moment to slip his shoes off and watched as Kyoutani did the same, kicking away the heavy boots he wore. Yahaba raised his eyebrows with amusement when he saw that the boots had made him a little taller and without them he only came up to about Yahaba’s chin or so.

Kyoutani saw him notice, and gripped Yahaba’s hips, shoving him hard against the door and crowding him back, latching onto his throat with his mouth. Yahaba made a soft sound, his arms coming up to wrap around Kyoutani’s broad shoulders, hands sliding up to clutch at his short hair, nails digging in when Kyoutani’s teeth grazed his skin. Kyoutani explored his throat, nipping and kissing from the mark he’d made at his ear all the way down to his shoulder, his fingers pressing up under his tank top and sliding over his hips.

“I saw you.” Kyoutani growled, low in his throat as he bit down particularly hard on Yahaba’s shoulder. His skin of his hands was rough, his nails short and blunt as he dragged them over Yahaba’s sensitive sides.

Yahaba whined with the pain, but didn’t stop him. “Dancing?” he was embarrassed to hear how out of breath and desperate his voice was, high pitched and soft. “You were supposed to.”

Kyoutani looked up, brushing his nose across Yahaba’s jaw to the other side, making Yahaba shiver with how gentle this gesture was. “Letting that man practically fuck you on the dance floor.”

Yahaba laughed, the sound lost when Kyoutani bit down on his ear lobe and tugged. “I wanted it to be you…” He slid his hands around to Kyoutani’s chest, finding strong, defined muscles there, and pushing the jacket off his shoulders with shaking hands.

One year, four months, six days since he’d last had sex. He knew he wouldn’t last long, and hoped that at least the man didn’t fault him for it. Kyoutani leaned away enough to strip himself of his jacket and t-shirt ( _holy shit he’s fucking ripped,_ Yahaba thought, mouth watering, wanting to lean down to lick and bite at his nipples) and then yanked Yahaba’s tank over his head and flung it somewhere in the hallway. Yahaba didn’t see where, though, because Kyoutani gripped his hips and turned him, pushing his face against the door as his hands gripped possessively at his hips.

“Don’t move,” Kyoutani told him, leaning close, the heat of his skin making goose flesh rise along Yahaba’s body.

“Uh-huh…” Yahaba panted, as Kyoutani’s fingers slipped into his pants and pushed them off his hips, his mouth trailing open mouthed, wet kisses down his spine. Yahaba whined through his nose as Kyoutani’s tongue dipped between his cheeks. “Ah, fuck…” He was shivering, pressing his head against the door and concentrating on not letting his knees give out, every single nerve in his body filled with lightning.

He felt Kyoutani smile against his ass, his hands pushing Yahaba’s pants further down. Yahaba helpfully raised one foot, then the other, and he was naked. Kyoutani’s palms slid up the back of his thighs — appreciatively humming at the strength he found in them, then his body shifted and he said, “Open your legs,” while helpfully kicking them apart further with his knees so he could place himself between them. Even knowing what he was about to do, Yahaba still made an _embarrassing_ noise when Kyoutani’s hands spread him open and his tongue licked a long, broad stripe from his balls and all the way up the cleft of his ass. Yahaba made a fist, smacking the door so the pain grounded him a bit, as he attempted to not become a puddle on this stranger’s doormat.

Kyoutani’s tongue was wet and hot, the fingers that followed sure of what they wanted. He didn’t have to think to hard about being still, because Kyoutani’s hands held him still without any effort at all, holding him open while he licked and sucked at him, making him wet with saliva, his breath so moist and hot against Yahaba’s sensitive skin it made him groan again, squeezing his hands into fists. The moan that punched out of Yahaba when Kyoutani’s saliva slicked finger breached him for the first time was overly loud in the tiny apartment. He shuddered, his entire body tensing and relaxing as it tried to comprehend another person again.

Kyoutani’s mouth moved away, lips dragging over his ass as his finger worked, in and out, not gentle, but Yahaba was only moaning louder with each thrust. And then, much to Yahaba’s surprise, Kyoutani bit down on one of his ass cheeks, really _fucking_ hard, and pushed a second finger in at the same moment. Yahaba choked on his tongue, and would have collapsed had Kyoutani’s free hand not been wrapped around one of his legs, holding him up. He shivered, his entire body going taut, pain and pleasure racing with equal force through his nerves.

“Shigeru,” Kyoutani rumbled after kissing the mark he’d left on his ass, “if you don’t open for my fingers I’ll fuck you open with my cock.”

Yahaba whimpered, not hating the idea, but pushing his hips back, making a conscious effort to do as he was told. He closed his eyes as Kyoutani’s fingers spread a little, twisting upwards until he pressed against his prostate, and Yahaba did stumble a little with the wave of heat that flooded through him, so that Kyoutani stood and hooked an arm under his chest to keep him from falling on the floor. His hand spread wide, brushing Yahaba’s nipple, then pinching it gently as the fingers in his ass _pressed_.

Yahaba might have screamed. Maybe. He thought he blacked out a little as his orgasm struck him so suddenly he didn’t even have time to think about it. Instead, he was coming all over the doormat, Kyoutani’s grunting as his fingers were caught tight.

When he was able to breathe again, Yahaba leaned heavily on the door, panting, rocking his hips a little. “Shit…” he mumbled, still tingling all over.

“That was fast,” Kyoutani said, his voice laced with laughter which didn’t actually sound like laughter. His fingers wiggled and Yahaba whined with how sensitive he was.

“Sorry,” Yahaba said, looking over his shoulder.

Kyoutani’s smile was sharp, his eyes dark and blown wide with desire. “That’s okay. I figured you’d come a few times before I was done with you. Come on, I told you I wouldn’t stop until I was satisfied.” He pulled his fingers out and helped Yahaba straighten on wobbly knees.

“Oh, you sound fun,” Yahaba managed to say, chuckling. Kyoutani pressed his fingers to the bruise under Yahaba’s ear as he cupped his hand around his nape and pulled him deeper into the apartment. It was one wide room with a kitchenette on the right, a door in the wall that showed a small bathroom, a bed on the left hand side and a couch acting as a separator between the ‘bedroom’ and ‘living room.’ Kyoutani pulled him towards the bedroom and let Yahaba sink onto the unmade bed. Yahaba reached for Kyoutani’s pants, unbuttoning the tight jeans and pushing them off his hips to reveal the hard curve of his cock in his underwear. Yahaba didn’t know the exact sound he made but Kyoutani laughed at him, so Yahaba shut him up by sliding forward on the bed, yanking his underwear down, and dragging his tongue over his cock.

Yahaba grinned when Kyoutani grunted and slipped a hand in his hair, gripping hard. It only drove him on, pressing his tongue hard against the tip as he wrapped his fingers around his cock and stroked slowly. He was encouraged by the hand in his hair, and dropped his head, liking the taste of him, and having the strange desire to _impress_ him. He swallowed him down, the sensation of fullness in his mouth too much, he’d forgotten — or maybe Kyoutani was just bigger than he’d thought — but he didn’t stop, humming around his thickness as Kyoutani groaned above him.

“Wait —” Kyoutani muttered, but was cut off by Yahaba squeezing him with the fingers of one hand and reaching down with his other to cup his balls.

Yahaba wanted to smile, but his mouth was too full. Then, suddenly, so quickly it hurt, Kyoutani yanked him off, little trails of saliva rolling off his tongue.

“Lay back,” Kyoutani said, voice strained.

Yahaba smiled up at him. “What, you don’t like my mouth?”

Kyoutani’s face twisted — clearly he did, but he didn’t want to admit it. He pushed Yahaba back and leaned over him, pressing his face to Yahaba’s stomach, sucking purple and pink bruises into his skin until Yahaba arched into him, squirming while Kyoutani held him down. Kyoutani licked his way down, and Yahaba thought _oh god he’s gonna blow me I’m gonna die holy shit —_

Kyoutani gripped his hips and flipped him over with very little effort. He hooked his fingers under his hips and pulled him up — _presenting him._ Yahaba moaned at the sensation, pressing his head to the sheets, surrounding himself with Kyoutani’s scent. Kyoutani still wore his jeans, and when he leaned against Yahaba’s hips the rough fabric and metal zipper bit into his skin. Kyoutani’s hands slid up his back, palms pressing hard until one hand fisted in Yahaba’s hair. He kissed Yahaba’s shoulders, nipping across his skin with his teeth until Yahaba moaned, “Jesus fucking Christ — _fuck me already_.”

Kyoutani smiled against his skin, leaning back and patting his ass with his hand. “One more thing.”

“Oh, _for the love —_ ” he yelped when Kyoutani smacked his ass hard.

Kyoutani pulled away, leaning over to his bedside table and pulling out an entire string of condoms and a half full bottle of lube. “Safety first,” Kyoutani said, mocking. He pushed his pants off, and leaned against Yahaba’s body, letting him feel his full erection against his ass while Kyoutani ripped open a condom. Wet lube slicked down Yahaba’s ass and Kyoutani’s fingers pressed inside again so that Yahaba whined and rocked into his hand.

Kyoutani pushed down on his spine, pressing his chest to the mattress as his fingers hooked upwards, pulling his ass up. “Put your arms up,” he told Yahaba. “I like your arms.”

Yahaba smiled to himself, pleased that Kyoutani liked _something_ about him. He did reach up, felt the slots of the headboard, and wrapped his fingers around one — just as Kyoutani began pushing inside him. Yahaba gasped at the stretch of it, his fingers scrabbling on the headboard, nails scratching in. Kyoutani was relentless, rocking in one long, slow stroke until he was fully inside, hips pressed hard against Yahaba’s ass.

Yahaba might have moaned, or possibly he died for a moment, he wasn’t totally sure. All he knew was that he was finally getting fucked, by a drop dead gorgeous man, he’d already had one orgasm, and he was _well_ on his way to his second. Kyoutani leaned down, hands holding his hips tight and laying his body across Yahaba’s back, pressing his forehead against his shoulder — he was breathing hard, the feeling hot and moist against his skin.

Yahaba shifted, rolling his hips so that Kyoutani moaned into his skin and sank his teeth in, biting until Yahaba shouted into the pillows. “Ouch! You — _fucking_ ”—he whimpered when Kyoutani snapped his hips —“animal! What are you, some sort of — ah!” Another thrust, Yahaba yelped, then moaned, stretching his spine so he could take Kyoutani in deeper.

“Don’t finish that,” Kyoutani growled, sitting back and gripping his hips harder, if that was possible, and snapped his hips again. He held Yahaba still while he fucked him, hard and fast, urged on by Yahaba’s moans and his attempts to try and rock with him.

And _fuck_ Kyoutani was good at this — either that or Yahaba was just that desperate — his toes curling as Kyoutani leaned over him.

Or both. With each thrust Kyoutani’s cock brushed his prostate. The muscles in his arms began to quiver. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ ,” he groaned out every time, small gasps any time he could suck in a decent amount of air. Kyoutani was relentless, trying to take him apart, so Yahaba could only moan and take it. His hands slid up Yahaba’s back until fingers curled into his mouth. Yahaba turned his face, sticking his tongue between Kyoutani’s fingers until they were wet and slick. He gagged when Kyoutani forced them deeper, and in retaliation bit down until Kyoutani snarled and tugged at his cheek.

“Fuck you,” Yahaba snapped when Kyoutani yanked his fingers away, the taste of blood on his teeth.

Kyoutani sat up, leaning his hips hard against him, letting his wet fingers graze along the small of his back. He said, voice low and rough, “Fuck yourself.”

Yahaba’s head dropped between his shoulders as he groaned in frustration at the sudden stillness. “What?” he gasped.

“Fuck yourself on my cock, creampuff.”

Yahaba turned to glare at him, and saw Kyoutani wearing a broad, satisfied smirk. Yahaba puffed out his cheeks in annoyance, but sat up on his hands, rocking himself back, twisting his hips. He groaned, feeling sweat drip from his hair, but not having the energy to wipe it away. Kyoutani’s fingers traced patterns into his back and hips as Yahaba moved, twisting his body so that he found the perfect spot with each roll of his hips. Pleasure swam through him, rising all the way up to his chest while the slick sound of their bodies filled the room.

Kyoutani’s fingernails grazed up his sides, making Yahaba shiver, then one hand reached down and pressed a nail to his nipple before rolling it between his fingers. He whimpered, leaning away from it, unable to decide if he liked it or not. Then Kyoutani’s other hand slipped around and gripped his cock, stroking up and twisting at the tip so Yahaba’s body jerked, oversensitive, but chasing that second orgasm like a dog after a bone. His body trembled, every nerve alight with heat. He dropped his head, smothering in the sheets, drowning in Kyoutani, feeling how raw his throat already was from how much he was moaning. He wondered how much it’d hurt by the time they were done, and found that he didn’t much care.

Kyoutani’s hands squeezed against his hips, bruising.

“Ah, fuck,” Yahaba muttered, twisting sideways, feeling the stretch of Kyoutani’s cock and wiggling backwards until it hurt so good. “I can’t,” he whispered, his thighs clenching and tingling with pain.

He heard Kyoutani laugh, soft and satisfied. His hands moved upwards, dragging pain across Yahaba’s ribs with his blunt nails — there would be deep red marks there tomorrow that Yahaba could use to remember this… as if he’d need help. Kyoutani leaned forward until Yahaba’s legs gave out and he laid himself flat along the sheets, his cock stuffed between his stomach and the mattress and with each of Kyoutani’s thrusts Yahaba thought he might come again. Kyoutani was _so deep_ inside him, carving out a place for himself, fucking owning him, and Yahaba only wanted more.

But Kyoutani was pulling out, pulling away, and Yahaba was letting out a strangled, distraught cry. “What the fuck?”

“Turn over,” Kyoutani said, not quite so mean, a little breathless. “Wanna see how flexible you are.”

Yahaba whined, shaking his head, burying his face in soft sheets. “I can’t move.”

So Kyoutani gripped his hips, turning him onto his side, then his back, slotting his fingers into the spaces of his hips as Yahaba lifted his leg, the sole of his foot pressed against Kyoutani’s chest. His hands roved upwards, squeezing Yahaba’s calf, tugging at his ankle until he could pull Yahaba’s leg over his shoulder and press a lingering, too sweet kiss to his calf. “Look at you,” Kyoutani whispered, too low, probably not meant for Yahaba to hear.

It took no pressure at all for his cock to slide right back in. Yahaba moaned with it, he could feel how wet and open he was. Kyoutani pushed his leg forward to press his knee against his chest as he began to thrust. It was slower, not as hard, but all the more intense because of it. Yahaba breathed out, panting, unable to draw in a full breath, his heart fluttering and his eyes rolled back in his head with pleasure. His hips bucked and his stomach clenched as Kyoutani reached down, wrapping his fingers around his cock and stroking.

Each breath was a little moan, he turned his head, eyes squeezing shut as his world shrank to a pinpoint as his orgasm rushed over him — a long, hot wave that floated and crested, leaving him boneless and _soft_. Kyoutani grunted with it, grinding against him, fucking him through it, then swiping a hand through the mess on his chest saying, “You’re so dirty.” The smile on his face was predatory and pleased with himself.

“Damn you,” Yahaba panted, unable to breathe, trembling, oversensitive and loving it. He threw his other leg up, hooking his knee around Kyoutani’s neck (proving his flexibility seeing as Kyoutani’s eyes widened minutely) and holding him captive. “Don’t stop.”

“Didn’t fucking plan on it,” Kyoutani growled, leaning forward, pistoning his hips and Yahaba practically cried he was so tender. Kyoutani’s dirty fingers explored down, pressing against the place they were connected. Yahaba threw his head back, body clenching until Kyoutani grunted in pain as Yahaba’s leg pulled him down and his body clenched hard around him. “Shit,” he muttered.

His hand roamed across Yahaba’s body: down his leg, up his side, across his nipple, and his fingers found Yahaba’s neck. When Yahaba didn’t protest (really, he was too fucked-out to do anything of the sort — Kyoutani could do literally anything to him and he would be _fine_ with that) Kyoutani’s hand wrapped around the column of his throat, squeezing gently.

“Hand,” Kyoutani said, breath huffing out the word with his hips. “Let go if you want me to stop.”

Yahaba couldn’t even nod his consent, but reached up and gripped Kyoutani’s wrist, holding on like a lifeline as his fingers pressed harder, more against the muscle than his windpipe, but still the sensation was overwhelming. Kyoutani fucked him hard, finding and taking his own pleasure as Yahaba moaned under him, wanton with it.

And when Kyoutani was close, he growled low in his chest, eyes clenched shut, his hand tightening so that when Yahaba spoke it came out a wet gurgle that sounded like _fucking animal._ And Kyoutani only thrust harder, fucking the breath out of him as he snarled, “Don’t call me that.”

So Yahaba groaned, then he had to take a moment to howl with pleasure as Kyoutani’s hips began to stutter. “Fucking animal — fucking _dog —_ _fuck_.” His nails dug in, other hand reaching up to clutch at the back of Kyoutani’s skull, feeling his bones, scraping so hard he knew he’d have red underneath his nails.

And when Kyoutani moaned, so deep his entire body shook with it, Yahaba made an effort to clutch at him, hold him close, some bastardized form of _soft_ that neither of them asked for. Kyoutani stilled, breathing hard, recovering, until he finally peeled his fingers away from Yahaba’s throat and Yahaba sucked down a long, cooling breath. Kyoutani pulled away, letting Yahaba unfold himself with a painful moan.

“Ah, fuck,” Yahaba whimpered, stretching out, his hips tense and his stomach trembling.

Kyoutani slipped off the bed, hesitated a moment as he wobbled (which Yahaba pretended he didn’t see) towards the bathroom to dispose of the condom… which, Yahaba almost laughed aloud when he realized it was a bright, neon pink. Not what he’d expected. He closed his eyes, floating in a happy sexed out bliss until Kyoutani came back, kneeling on the bed beside him, and Yahaba jumped in surprise at the warmth that touched his stomach.

He opened his eyes to see Kyoutani with a warm cloth, stroking his stomach clean.

“Here.”

Yahaba managed to push himself up, taking the cloth and wiping himself down all over, wincing at how it almost hurt to touch. “Thanks,” he said, then chuckled. “For almost three.”

Kyoutani was searching the small pile of clothes beside the bed until he found light blue gym shorts and pulled them on. “Almost?”

“Very close, but not quite. I might have passed out if you’d managed it, though.” He grinned, reaching up with one hand to trace the tingling, still warm place where Kyoutani’s fingers had been at his neck. Kyoutani’s lips twitched in what Yahaba thought could have been a smile. This nut was tough to crack, Yahaba thought. When he finished with the cloth Kyoutani took it from him and tossed it into the bathroom where it landed with a soft _splat_ that made them both make a face.

“Shouldn’t have done that,” Kyoutani said.

Yahaba grinned, but was too tired to properly laugh. He stretched his arms up over his head, arching his back to try and ease the pain, and flopped back, yawning and letting air surge into the painful part of his belly where he’d been folded double. As he lay there, his heart thudding as it attempted to calm itself, _still catching his breath (goddamn),_ he heard Kyoutani get up and move around, pacing around his room. Was he nervous? Yahaba would leave soon, if he wanted him to, but did Kyoutani think he could _walk_ so soon afterwards? Maybe after a nap…


	3. Chapter 3

After a time, Yahaba sat up, and saw to his amusement that Kyoutani hadn’t been pacing, but cleaning. Picking up clothes and separating them into specific hampers he had against the wall near the bathroom. They looked at each other for a moment, then Yahaba grinned. “So… do you think I could use your shower?”

Kyoutani shrugged. “Sure. Towels are in there.”

Yahaba managed to climb from the bed and shuffle to the bathroom, finding a stack of clean towels and washcloths in a cabinet. Stepping into the shower, he turned the water scalding hot and braced his arms against the wall as fiery rivulets of water ran down his back, searing into his skin. He sighed with pleasure and arched his back, letting the water warm his muscles.

Along a hanging rack was several bottles, and Yahaba was pleased and amused that Kyoutani wasn’t one of those guys who used a 3-in-1 brand, but an individual bottle for each need. He pulled down the shampoo to smell it, finding that it was a nice, clean scent. He thought he recognized it from Kyoutani’s hair, underneath the sweat from the club. He thought it appropriate that Kyoutani would choose something clean and simple, since he was forever surrounded by cologne, perfume, and body spray from the club he worked at. And when he put it in his hair it foamed up almost before he even scrubbed it into his roots, which he liked, it made his hair feel extra clean.

After it was gone, he glanced up, seeing through the fogged up glass Kyoutani framed in the doorway. He hadn’t bothered closing the door, what was the point, and Kyoutani stepped inside, the blue of his shorts making a puddle on the floor when he dropped them. The sliding glass opened a fraction, steam rushing towards it and he stuck his head in.

“I don’t have a lot of hot water.”

Yahaba pushed his hair out of his face, smiling at him. “Join me, then. We can save water,” he said.

But his tone and Kyoutani’s face both indicated that getting _clean_ wasn’t too high on their priority list. He stepped in, closing the door behind him, and sidled up beside Yahaba, reaching and brushing his knuckles down his torso. Yahaba smiled at him, taking the moment of stillness to admire the other man. He was strong and lean, all muscle, and Yahaba took pleasure in tracing the paths of his ribcage and his stomach.

“Oh, already?” Yahaba asked, smiling, grazing his knuckles along the half hard length of him.

Kyoutani’s lips formed a smirk as he moved closer, pressing their bodies together. “Are you regretting our deal?”

“Not a bit,” Yahaba said with a laugh. “Just wondering just how much stamina you have.”

Reaching up behind Yahaba’s head, Kyoutani pulled down a second bottle. “I’m sure you’ll find out by the end of this.” He took the cloth that Yahaba had set out and began to run the warm cloth over Yahaba’s shoulders.

He hummed softly, liking the feel of of Kyoutani’s hands on him, gentle this time, exploring his body with kisses and fingertips. When Yahaba’s skin was slick with soap, the rising scent of mint and pine floating up along with the steam, Kyoutani slotted himself in behind him, pressing wet, open mouthed kisses along his shoulder and neck, nuzzling his nose behind his ear. His fingers found the bruises he’d made and pressed into them, making Yahaba moan and lean against him. He felt Kyoutani’s length against his ass and shivered despite the hot water.

His fingers probed downward, touching Yahaba’s sensitive hole and he made a pathetic sound. “Oh, no.”

Kyoutani smiled against his skin. “Too much?”

“I’ll _die_ if you fuck me right now,” Yahaba admitted.

Kyoutani hummed, nipping the sweet sensitive skin behind his ear, brushed his nose along the base of his hairline. “I want you.” He draped the cloth over the rail on the door, using both hands to explore his body, roving over Yahaba’s front and sides, holding him close so that Yahaba twitched and squirmed in his embrace. “You do have a nice body.”

Yahaba’s laugh was lost in a moan when Kyoutani shifted, and his cock slipped between Yahaba’s thighs. When Yahaba tightened them again he was caught and it was Kyoutani’s turn to let out a little moan, plastering himself to Yahaba’s back. Yahaba reached back, searching blindly, until his hand found Kyoutani’s hip and gripped him, pulling him close as his head dropped back against Kyoutani’s shoulder. He shuddered as Kyoutani’s hips moved, his cock brushing along the most sensitive places between his legs.

“Mhm…you're so warm,” Yahaba whispered, mouth wet, water raining down his face.

Kyoutani licked up his throat, tugging at his ear with his teeth as his nails of one hand grazed gently up his body, his other reaching down and gripping Yahaba’s cock, stroking him. Everything was too wet, sensation almost lost in the hot water, so he squeezed harder, until Yahaba whined with it and almost lost his balance, having to lean hard against Kyoutani in order to stay upright.

It was messy, and quick, Yahaba was too sensitive still and Kyoutani was in a hurry, rushing to catch his orgasm and stake another claim on Yahaba’s body by catching the skin of his throat between his teeth. “Fuck,” he growled out when Yahaba came to a long, rolling orgasm that had his body rolling and trembling, his thighs a vice around him and pushing him over the edge very soon after. He stroked his fingers up and down Yahaba’s trembling body, soothingly soft.

“Gross,” Yahaba said, pulling his legs apart.

Kyoutani chuckled, stepping back. “Shut up.” He reached up and plucked the shower head from the wall. He took up the washcloth again and slathered it in soap, then stroked it over Yahaba’s stomach. “Spread your legs,” he said, crouching.

Yahaba leaned against the wall, doing what he asked and liking the look of this man on his knees before him. He flinched when the hot water hit him, and Kyoutani turned the heat down just enough so that it was comfortable. Yahaba said, “I didn’t realize you were so considerate.”

Kyoutani looked up from cleaning between Yahaba’s legs. “Shut up,” he said again.

Yahaba laughed. “You don’t have much cognitive function afterwards, do you?”

He ignored Yahaba, taking the shower head and spraying him all over to make sure he was clean, the pads of his fingers soft against the inside of his thighs. “There,” he said. “Done.” He stood, washing the water over Yahaba’s chest.

Yahaba grinned, both the orgasm and the heat of the shower making him sleepy. He stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around his waist and taking another to scrub over his hair. Glancing back, he saw Kyoutani’s nakedness through the frosted glass and had an urge to go back in.

Fuck, he was losing his mind, this guy was _ridiculous._

He shook his head, stepping out and closing the door for good measure. He found his clothes folded at the foot of the bed and groaned at the thought that he’d have to put them back on. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he let out a contented sigh and flopped back, hoping Kyoutani didn’t care that his hair was still wet. It was along the bottom, anyway, it didn’t matter. He closed his eyes, breathing slowly, happy with his split second decision to leave ballet class and seek out the DJ. Kyoutani Kentarou… it was a nice name. He’d have to look it up sometime. He wondered… if he could get his phone number. Surely the sex was good enough. Maybe he wouldn’t have to go so long without again. Floating in drowsiness, he listened to the sound of the water hitting the tile, trying not to imagine Kyoutani naked in the shower and failing. He let himself imagine, and remember, and, after a time, dozed off into an easy, exhausted sleep.

 

* * *

 

Fingers brushed across his cheek, and Kyoutani’s voice said, “Hey. I’m ordering food. What do you want?”

Yahaba murmured, drowsy and unable to pull himself from sleep immediately. “Mhm?”

“I’m ordering food. What do you like, creampuff?”

Yahaba opened his eyes, saw Kyoutani tapping one handed on his phone. He looked down at Yahaba, raising one eyebrow. “Well?”

“What place?”

“They’ve got everything.”

“Mhm… sushi.” He sounded like a zombie, he knew it, but he didn’t care. Kyoutani did this to him, he could suffer the consequences.

“What kind?”

“Any kind.” Yahaba closed his eyes, turning and curling up, yawning. “Can you get those little salmon thingies?”

Kyoutani was quiet a moment, presumably looking at the menu. “The little ball things?”

“Yes,” Yahaba moaned a little, grinning. “Those over a bowl of rice? My favorite.”

“I’ll do my best to get you some,” Kyoutani told him.

Yahaba found himself dozing for a few minutes while Kyoutani finished his ordering, and suddenly he sat up. “Wait, why are you feeding me?”

Kyoutani actually laughed, sounding like he shocked himself with it. He dug through one of the piles of clean clothes he had and tossed a pair of pants at Yahaba’s head. “I missed dinner, I’m hungry. I thought you might be too.” He took the towel and scrubbed it over his head, then behind his ear, and Yahaba had to stand and turn to put the pants on so Kyoutani wouldn’t see him smiling at the way he looked rather puppy like scratching behind his ear.

“So… you mind if I snooze while we wait for food?”

Kyoutani waved a hand. “You probably need the rest.”

Yahaba flopped back, curling up, dragging a blanket up over himself and muttered, “My ass sure does…”

 

* * *

 

The closing of the door is what woke him. Yahaba yawned and stretched, wiggling a little to work out the kinks in his back.

“Food’s here,” Kyoutani said, padding back to his couch and dumping the food on the table.

Yahaba sat up, scrubbing his hair and fluffing it up. It took his brain a moment to catch up, but when it did it decided to tell his stomach that it was hungry, and he slipped off the bed, stumbling to the couch and flopping down on the other end. Kyoutani handed him a box and Yahaba found beautiful sushi inside, of many varying flavors.

“I didn’t know what you liked,” Kyoutani explained. “And you were too sleepy to look at the menu.”

“I like literally everything. Did you get —”

“Yes,” Kyoutani said, handing him a tiny bowl with the pink, delicate orbs. “And these, too.”

Yahaba took the second box that was offered, and opened it, then snorted a laugh. “Oh my god. Dessert first?” He took out one of the little puff pastries, yellow custard oozing out of a crack in the side.

Kyoutani’s mouth turned up in an amused smile. “I thought you’d like those. Creampuffs for the creampuff.”

Yahaba wrinkled his nose — both pleased and annoyed. He wasn’t sure he hated the name when Kyoutani said it, and in fact he decided that he rather liked it… but only the way it sounded coming out of his mouth because it wasn’t an insult anymore, it was almost a compliment. “You’re disgustingly sweet.” He took a bite, the custard spilling out over his fingers. “Oh, so are these. Here, try it.” He held out the half eaten creampuff, and Kyoutani leaned forward, but instead of taking it from him with his hands, he pulled it from his fingers with his mouth, sucking his fingers clean of the custard in a way that made Yahaba’s mind think of other, more intimate things.

Yahaba leaned back, crossing his legs with a smile. He took up his sushi and examined it, picking out the one he wanted and popping it in his mouth. He hummed happily. “Delicious. Thank you.”

Kyoutani was digging into the curry he ordered. “Welcome. I thought dancers ate salads and shit?”

Yahaba snorted, finishing his next bite before saying, “Fuck that, not me.” Kyoutani grinned at him, but was too busy eating to say anything else. “So,” Yahaba began, popping little bits of salmon roe into his mouth and letting them burst in his mouth. “Who are you?”

Kyoutani looked over at him, raising his eyebrows. “I told you my name.”

“No, I mean… _who_ are you? What made you start DJ’ing at the club? What are your other hobbies? Sex, clearly, is one, thank _God._ But do you, like, collect manga, or trains, or do you have body parts in your walls?”

“… No bodies.”

Yahaba grinned. “You collect trains, then?”

Kyoutani gestured to the almost bare apartment. “Do you see any trains?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t collect trains.”

Yahaba stuffed another piece of sushi in his mouth, chewing slowly as he watched Kyoutani poke through his food. “You’re a very private person,” he observed.

“I don’t know you,” Kyoutani pointed out.

“You know parts of me really well.”

Kyoutani sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t have bodies, I don’t collect trains, nor manga.”

“So you don’t have a lot of stuff? You should see my place, it’s full of junk.” And actually the image of Kyoutani in _his_ bed was doing _things_ to his imagination. Good things.

Kyoutani’s face tightened, and he looked pained for a moment so that Yahaba felt that he’d said something wrong, but he didn’t know what that would be.

“Okay, then,” Yahaba said, “since you don’t want to talk about yourself, being all _private_ … I’ll tell you about me. I’m a ballet dancer, obviously. I was put in dance when I was a toddler and just never quit. I never loved it, I never hated it. I’m good at it, so I do it mostly to keep in shape. I’m in uni, working towards some sort of business degree to make my parents happy but I’d like to take night classes in, oh, art history or something else that’s actually interesting and fun. I haven’t dated anyone in a few years and the last guy I dated was a total _twat_ so I broke it off before I got hurt.” He ate another piece of sushi while Kyoutani watched him.

“Good,” he said, slowly, going back to his curry. “At least you knew to walk away before you got your heart broken.”

Yahaba watched the way the skin around his eyes tightened and how he jabbed his fork into the curry. “So… is that what happened to you?”

Kyoutani narrowed his eyes, but said nothing.

“Was it a long relationship?” Yahaba asked, hoping he wasn’t crossing a line. But Kyoutani _had_ seemed like he was working through some emotions on his body earlier, and he had always been too curious for his own good.

Kyoutani made an aggravated growling sound, rolling his eyes. “I’d prefer not to talk about it.”

“Did they hurt you, then?”

He glared at Yahaba, but Yahaba only met his gaze steadily, chewing on more sushi. Finally, Kyoutani said, “Yes. And he’s the reason the apartment has nothing in it. He took it all. So, no, I’d really rather not talk about it. I don’t need a shrink.”

Yahaba thought that maybe he did, by the way his body was aching. “Fine,” he said instead, “fine. We don’t have to. I just thought we ought to get to know one another a little better.”

“Why?” Kyoutani huffed, setting his food on the table. “This is just sex.”

Yahaba blinked, feeling his face flush and he looked away, embarrassed. It was true… but it was also true that he was hoping they’d get to see more of each other. “Mhm… I guess so,” he said, setting aside his plate too.

Kyoutani turned to him, reaching out a hand to take Yahaba’s wrist and pull him closer. Yahaba laughed nervously, trying to tug his hand away. “Whoah, whoah, whoah, slow down, dude.”

Kyoutani frowned. “I’m ready to go again.”

“Ha! I’m not. Jesus, let me rest. You’re a monster.” He laughed, shaking his head. When Kyoutani made a disgruntled face he said, “They say you should wait fifteen minutes after eating to swim. It should be the same for sex, yeah?” He inched forward, climbing into his lap, looping his arms around Kyoutani’s bare shoulders and leaning against him. “We can do other stuff, though.”

“Stuff like?” Kyoutani asked, his arms coming around Yahaba’s waist.

Yahaba smiled, curling his fingers through the soft hair at the back of Kyoutani’s neck. “You still haven’t let me kiss you.”

“I don’t do kissing.”

Yahaba pouted, showing off his own lips because he knew he was handsome, and was rewarded when Kyoutani’s eyes flicked down to his mouth. “I love it,” he said. “Especially when you do it slow… and soft…” He leaned forward, letting his lips brush Kyoutani’s — not exactly a kiss, but he still saw Kyoutani’s pupils contract and go wide with arousal. He might not _do_ kissing… but he _did_ like it.

“Did your ex not kiss you?” Yahaba asked, tilting his head the other way, painting his lips like an artist working the most delicate canvas.

Kyoutani’s breath hitched.

His fingers twitched against Yahaba’s bare skin.

They were so close, Yahaba could feel how still Kyoutani had gone, not even breathing. The brown and gold of his eyes was mesmerizing, and all the anger that he tried to mask his face with was crumbling away the longer Yahaba sat wrapped around him, kissing not kissing.

Yahaba dropped his voice to the most seductive of whispers, feeling the words dance over his tongue, “Do you want me to teach you?”

He felt Kyoutani’s sharp inhale, and the slow, shaky breath he let out. Yahaba took that as a yes, and darted his tongue out, tracing the delicate, soft skin of his bottom lip while Kyoutani shivered. The muscles of his lower body twitched, his stomach tightening.

Yahaba smiled, rocking forward, finally kissing him fully on the mouth, his fingers pushing into Kyoutani’s hair, feeling the marks he’d made earlier and being sure to be gentle with them. Kyoutani sighed, his mouth trembling, and Yahaba slid one hand down, tracing his thumb over one of his nipples.

“Shigeru…” Kyoutani muttered, gasping.

Yahaba smiled against his mouth. He circled his nipple with his thumb as he swiped his tongue across his mouth. Kyoutani groaned, and Yahaba dipped his tongue in, searching out each corner of his mouth.

He pulled away enough so their breath mingled between them, Kyoutani’s mouth was red and wet, still halfway open, as if he couldn’t comprehend that Yahaba had stopped kissing him. Their eyes met when Kyoutani flicked his gaze up and Yahaba smiled, touching their noses together as he rolled his hips. “The best kind of kissing…” he kissed Kyoutani’s bottom lip, “is the kind that makes you want to _keep_ doing it.”

Kyoutani nodded, tilting his head up, his own tongue darting out to touch Yahaba’s lip.

Yahaba grinned, twisting his head to brush their lips together until they were both tingly. Kyoutani’s legs widened, so Yahaba was perched across his strong, solid thighs and when he rolled his hips they both moaned at the contact. Yahaba dropped his head, tracing his lips across Kyoutani’s cheek and down his jaw to his throat, pressing his tongue to his rapid pulse.

“He didn’t like kissing,” Kyoutani panted, his hands sliding up Yahaba’s back, tracing the bones of his shoulder blades with soft brushes of his fingers.

Yahaba nuzzled into his throat, nipping at his collarbone, all sharp angles and strong muscles. “But you do.”

Kyoutani shivered, rocking his hips up as Yahaba clutched at his hair and pulled his head back so he could kiss the underside of his jaw. “I —” he groaned when Yahaba pinched his nipple between his thumb and finger. “ _God._ Yes.”

Yahaba chuckled, and moved up so he could tug on his lip with his teeth. Kyoutani growled, gripping a hand in Yahaba’s hair and pulling him down, turning his head so he could open his mouth and deepen their kiss. Yahaba whimpered with the intensity of it — and Kyoutani’s excitement. He tasted of ginger and cloves, and when he groaned it vibrated on Yahaba’s tongue and made him roll his hips so that Kyoutani kept doing it.

“Kyou…” Yahaba moaned, sliding his hand down Kyoutani’s belly, nails grazing, and when Kyoutani tensed with excitement, pushed his nails back up.“You like this.”

He nodded, panting, eyes clouded with desire. “You’re good at it.”

Yahaba smiled, straightening up and kissing him again. He pulled away to speak, but was cut off as Kyoutani gripped a hand in his hair and tugged hard, pulling his head back so he could bite his adam’s apple. A moan floated from his lips. “Ah, fuck…”

Kyoutani’s teeth found the mark he’d made earlier and bit down again. Liquid fire raced between his legs as he whined with the pain. But if he shied away from pain he would never have made a good dancer, so he welcomed it, because he knew that once his body worked through the pain it would only find pleasure. He wrapped his arms around Kyoutani’s shoulders, holding him close, and Kyoutani moved his mouth lower, sucking another mark until Yahaba was a puddle in his lap. Everything was hot and tense, his body shivering with the need to keep going.

“This…” he panted, stroking his fingers over Kyoutani’s hair, down his neck, nails digging in, in, in. “This isn’t kissing…”

Kyoutani’s tongue was wet and warm as it made its way across his shoulder and up his throat, touched his ear. “And yet… I want to keep doing it.” He sank lower on the couch, spreading his thighs so that Yahaba was stuck there, his own legs spread and Kyoutani’s arms around him, holding him captive. One of his hands floated down Yahaba’s spine, making his skin tingle.

Yahaba was making embarrassing noises. He felt Kyoutani smiling against his throat before he drug his open mouth along his shoulder, up and down.

“I can’t wait,” Kyoutani said, his hand sliding down into the pants he’d given Yahaba, cupping his ass. He moved his fingers down, pressing between his cheeks and Yahaba whimpered with the pain… and with how much he wanted it, bucking back against him but unable to really move, stuck on Kyoutani’s thighs. The thought of removing his hands from Kyoutani’s hair never even remotely occurred to him, he needed a way to not fall into oblivion and Kyoutani didn't seem to care about the vice-grip on his head.

When he pressed a finger inside him, Yahaba whined, arching his back, pressing back while Kyoutani mouthed at his throat. “… hurts…” But he didn't stop the tiny motions of his hips.

Kyoutani's voice was rough, arousal making him grumble somewhere low in his throat. “Want me to stop?”

His voice was a breathless sigh, “ _No._ ”

Teeth tugged at the sensitive skin under his ear. Yahaba whined and leaned into him, mumbling nonsense as Kyoutani’s finger pushed deeper.

“You askin’ me to hurt you?” Kyoutani asked, pulling his face down for a kiss, open mouthed with no finesse, because Yahaba was still panting, a babbling mess.

“Yes…” Yahaba’s eyes fluttered closed as he laid his face on Kyoutani’s shoulder, trying to move, and discovering he didn’t know what he was looking for. His voice broke when Kyoutani pushed a second finger inside him, all the way up to the knuckle and stretched them. His body shuddered, his chest trembling as he spent all his energy trying to simply breathe. It was too much, all over, Kyoutani’s body under him, his arm around him, hand in his hair and fingers inside him, the smell of sweat and sex in his nose.

Kyoutani leaned his head against his, stroking his hair as he stretched him. He pressed kisses along his neck and shoulder, running his nose along the shivering muscle.

“Come on,” Kyoutani whispered, pulling his fingers away and tucking his arms up under Yahaba’s body so he could stand and carry him to the bed. Yahaba was boneless, draping himself over him, panting and drawing his mouth over his shoulder. When he laid Yahaba down and knelt over him, kissing him again, Yahaba melted into the bed. He hooked his elbows around Kyoutani’s neck to hold him so they could properly kiss until Yahaba was dizzy with desire.

“Kyou,” Yahaba gasped out, spreading his legs, wrapping them around Kyoutani’s waist. “Fuck me, please. I want you.” He turned his head, nuzzling into Kyoutani’s neck, as Kyoutani did the same, groaning with his words.

“Lift your hips,” he said, tucking his knees up under Yahaba’s ass, then swearing and pulling away.

Yahaba cried out, distressed. “Wait, where are you going?” But Kyoutani ignored him, patting the top of the bed until he found the condoms and lube he’d discarded earlier. Yahaba reached to help him as he kicked the borrowed pants off, but Kyoutani batted his hands away.

“Stop that, I can do it faster.”

Yahaba snorted, picking up the bottle instead… but Kyoutani took that away from him, too. “What the fuck?”

“Let me do it.”

Yahaba huffed, laying back, watching as Kyoutani rolled a condom on, _bright_ green, too funny, he couldn’t help but laugh. “Why do you have those?”

“Safe sex is the best sex.” He dribbled lube onto his hand and stroked himself, closing his eyes and letting out a puff of air, the muscles in his stomach tightening. That sight had Yahaba’s mouth watering.

Yahaba actually laughed aloud. “I won’t argue that with you. Where did you get them? They’re ridiculous.”

“Got them at the club.”

“But why are they _neon_?”

“I don’t care what they look like,” Kyoutani said, picking up Yahaba’s old towel and wiping his fingers clean, “as long as they work.”

Yahaba grinned, then gasped when Kyoutani grabbed his ankles and pulled him down towards him. “Guess so,” he muttered, throwing his head back as Kyoutani pushed in. It took nothing at all, and he was full and stretched wide before he was even able to draw in a full breath to moan.

Kyoutani didn’t stop, but moved his hips slowly in long, deep thrusts. Yahaba clutched at his shoulders, pulling him down for another kiss, dragging his nails across his shoulders so Kyoutani moaned into his mouth and his entire body rolled with it.

This time, it wasn’t rough, or fast, as Yahaba expected. Kyoutani took his time finding the places that made Yahaba shudder and moan, kissing along his face and throat and shoulder, his fingers stroking down his chest and stomach. Yahaba’s body was spent, he couldn’t stop trembling, even as the pleasure rose higher, a sweet fire burning in his belly, fueled by each of Kyoutani’s touches, softer than before. His couldn’t keep his eyes open, or his mouth shut, and he moaned with each thrust, voice pitching higher as his orgasm built. But he _couldn’t_ , not again, he wasn’t even hard anymore, his _bones_ felt like they’re falling apart.

Then Kyoutani pulled his hips up, pushing deep inside and staying there, the smell of sweat and sex all over, and Kyoutani’s breath hot against his shoulder, his hips rolling slow, never pulling out, just _moving_. Yahaba tasted salt on his lips, realized he’s crying, and can only hold on harder as a dry, aching orgasm burst inside him, instantly filling him with fire, and a wave of cold ice immediately after, and too many emotions to name. It felt _amazing_. It went _on, and on, and on._ He thought this was what tantric sex might have been about.

Kyoutani grunted above him, caught by his body, then taking his wrists and pinning him down. He kissed him again, taking his turn in exploring Yahaba’s mouth. “Look at you…” he said between kisses. He dropped his forehead to lay against Yahaba’s, their breath mingling, too hot, moist, close. He kissed the tears from Yahaba’s cheeks, dragging his tongue along his mouth so Yahaba tasted his own tears.

Yahaba didn’t even know _why_ he was crying, other than his body didn’t know what _else_ to do. Everything was closing in too tight. He tugged at Kyoutani’s hands on his wrists, unable to move, liking it, hating it, wanting more, needing less, beginning to shake too hard. He closed his eyes as his vision swam. Kyoutani’s breath ghosted over his cheek as he moved, their bodies stuck together with sweat, the sound of sex too loud in his ears.

And suddenly.

It was all too much.

He’d never been this full for so long, or pushed so far. He couldn’t breathe, everything tingling, every muscle shaking. Every movement felt like it belonged to someone else and not him. He couldn’t speak, even though his brain and his body begged _stop stop stop_ _too much too much air air air._

Something must have been apparent, though, because even as Kyoutani began to lose his rhythm, his breath coming in sharp gasps, close to his own release, he noticed how still and quiet Yahaba was, and sat back, letting him go and breathing hard. “Shigeru?” he asked.

When Yahaba didn’t — couldn’t — answer Kyoutani was still for a long time, as if debating his next move. Then he pulled out, pulled away, leaving Yahaba alone on the bed, where he curled up in a ball, hands clutched to his chest, as if protecting his heart. He couldn’t stop shaking. He couldn’t even hear anything, his heart was so loud in his ears. Each breath was more difficult than the last.

Then, something warm touched his face — and he shouted in fear, jumping away.

Kyoutani stood over him, a washcloth in his hand. “It’s just me,” he said, voice soft and tender. “You’re okay.”

Yahaba blinked at him, uncomprehending. “What?”

Kyoutani shook his head, kneeling beside him. “Let me clean you up.” He waited until Yahaba nodded, then reached over and stroked the cloth over his cheeks. He gently pushed him to lay back so he could wipe the sweat from his body, looking surprised that Yahaba’s last orgasm hadn’t dirtied him. “Are you okay?”

Yahaba nodded, curling back up when Kyoutani was through, shivering. He was both freezing cold and burning up, and couldn’t keep a straight thought in his brain. He wanted to curl up and stop feeling for a little while. Stop being himself. He needed to learn how to breathe again.

Kyoutani sat beside him, quietly watching him, then he reached down and carefully touched his shoulder. Yahaba flinched, but when he pulled his hand away, Yahaba reached out a hand and snatched his wrist. “Wait… don’t go.” He didn’t know how his voice sounded, but he honestly wasn’t sure he actually said anything aloud, he couldn’t feel his throat, and couldn’t hear anything, but he saw Kyoutani. Felt how warm and soft his skin was, clutched at the sharp bone of his wrist.

Kyoutani hesitated, then reached down to him, bundling him in blankets, pulling him into his lap and wrapping his arms around him in a show of superfluous affection. Yahaba leaned against him, pressing his hand to his chest to feel Kyoutani’s heart thumping underneath his palm.

The steady rhythm was soothing, and it helped Yahaba calm his own breath and heartbeat, and the world slowly began to come back to him. He didn’t know how long it took, but eventually he realized the blankets were warm from having Kyoutani’s arms around him. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, face buried in Kyoutani’s neck, his warm skin felt good on his cheeks. His voice was rough even to his ears, his mouth almost too dry to speak.

“Don’t be,” Kyoutani told him. He had a hand curling against Yahaba’s shoulder, the other arm firmly around his waist to hold him upright, but he wasn’t moving, just being a _body_ for Yahaba right now, somehow understanding that’s all he needed. “I shouldn’t have pushed you like that.”

“I’m the one that told you to,” Yahaba said, a little mirthless laugh bubbling up out of him. “You were right, though.”

“Mhm?” Kyoutani tilted his face and Yahaba had to force himself not to ask if he was raised by dogs or something, the getsure was so much a _head tilt_.

“You said, right when we met, you said I couldn’t handle you.” Yahaba looked away, somehow ashamed of himself. That was stupid. He was the normal one. Kyoutani was the beast in bed. And he thought he’d made a _damn good_ go of it before he’d lost his head.

Kyoutani pressed his lips together, his brows drawing down over his eyes. “It’s not …” But he never said what it wasn’t, just shook his head. “Are you okay, now?” Yahaba nodded, leaning back to try and see into his face, but Kyoutani said, “Let me up, now.”

Yahaba didn’t want him to go, wanted to stay curled up with him. But Kyoutani was picking him up and coaxing him back to the bed, and Yahaba had no choice but to disentangle himself from the sheets and find a place to lay down, unsure of these pillows, of these sheets, of where Kyoutani slept, or where his place was. If Kyoutani kicked him out… he wasn’t sure he’d make it home in the state he was in.

“Go to sleep, now,” Kyoutani said, and Yahaba let out a breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding.

“Are you sure?”

“Actually,” he muttered, holding up a finger. “Just — hang on. One sec.” He padded away, having put on underwear at some point, and disappeared from Yahaba’s line of sight. He waited, anxious, his nerves rising in him again until he was nearly squirming, ready to scream, until Kyoutani came back, holding out a bottle of water to him. “Drink this.”

Yahaba blinked, but sat up and took the bottle. “Thanks…”

Kyoutani folded his arms, frowning at him.

“What?”

“Drink it.”

“Oh,” Yahaba muttered, uncapping it and taking a tentative sip. It was _cold_ cold, little tiny flecks of ice in it, and at first Yahaba wanted to put it down and wipe the drops of water from his fingers. But Kyoutani sat on the edge of the bed and leaned over, watching him and shaking his head when Yahaba made to put it down. So Yahaba tipped it up again, the water and little ice flecks almost too much for his throat. But then his body remembered how thirsty it was. The last _real_ drink he’d had was hours ago at the club, and it hadn’t even been water.

That had been a mistake. Probably _the_ quintessential mistake of the evening.

After that, he turned the bottle up, greedily sucking it down as fast as his body would allow him. When Kyoutani was satisfied, he stood again, and Yahaba stopped drinking in order to breathe.

“Thank you,” he said again, panting a little at the cold in his belly. He probably shouldn’t have drank it so fast, so he traced his fingers over the condensation, swallowing nothing, but needing the motion to spread feeling back to his throat after the numbing cold.

“Welcome.” Kyoutani was moving around the half of the apartment that was the living room, picking up their plates from dinner. He even ate a piece of sushi that Yahaba had left untouched, not seeming to care that it was warm by now. Yahaba watched as he threw the containers in the trash bin, picked up their discarded towels and dropped them in a hamper. “Do you want those pants back?”

Yahaba shook his head. The idea of crawling out from under the blankets frightened him, somehow. As if... when he left their safety Kyoutani would tell him _well since you’re already up, just go_ _on and go home._ He sipped the water again when Kyoutani quirked an eyebrow at him.

Only after the apartment was cleaned of all the laundry and dishes did Kyoutani come back to bed.

Yahaba reached for him, but Kyoutani shook his head. “I don’t _cuddle_ either.” He laid down, bringing up the thin sheet that Yahaba wasn’t wrapped in up to his chest and turning away, settling down to sleep.

Yahaba slumped, disappointed. He took another drink of the water before setting it on the floor beside the bed. “You don’t cuddle the way you don’t kiss?” he asked, wondering if this, too, was a byproduct of his ex.

Kyoutani turned his head to glower over his shoulder. “Don’t.”

So it was. Yahaba glowered right back. “So you’re allowed to fuck me literally senseless but you won’t cuddle afterwards?”

Kyoutani turned away. “Yup.” But something in his voice was wrong. Something told Yahaba that this was just his way of keeping his distance. Maybe it was the ex, maybe he still hadn’t recovered from being hurt, maybe it was that he didn’t want Yahaba around anymore, but had more heart than to just kick him to the curb and they would part ways in the morning.

Still, Yahaba couldn’t do anything about it, so he lay down, surrounded still by Kyoutani’s scent. He reached a hand out, watching Kyoutani’s bare shoulders as he breathed, and wanting to lay his palm between them to feel the strength of him, the echo of his heartbeat whispering against his fingers. Instead, he dropped his hand to the sheets, and closed his eyes.

This wasn’t how he expected the night to end… and while he didn’t regret the sex (it had been mind _blowing_ up until it was mind _numbing_ ) he wished that he had the acuity and constitution to go home. He would take a too hot bath in his too big bath tub, soaking with salt or bubbles or something that smelled too sweet to overpower the musk of Kyoutani. He didn’t want to forget… but it would probably be easier to wipe this experience from his mind. With the thought that maybe he’d wake early and he could leave before the embarrassing _morning after_ conversation, he sank into sleep, too exhausted to even dream.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Yahaba was overly warm. There was a hand on his chest. Air fluttered against the back of his neck, making goosebumps rise along his arms.

And he _hurt_. All over. The arches of his feet were tense and tight from when he’d curled his toes, his thighs throbbed, his stomach fluttered with each breath, his shoulders and neck, and back, and _ass_. If everything hurt, his ass was the preeminent pain that he noticed. He wasn’t sure he would walk for three days, much less dance.

The hand on his chest twitched, and the body behind him shifted, sighing against his neck and into his hair. Yahaba opened his eyes, feeling the crust in the corners and wanting to get up and scrub his face clean. But one of Kyoutani’s arms was over his waist, the other cradled his head, and his knees tucked up behind Yahaba’s, toes pressing against the bottom of his feet.

He was surrounded by Kyoutani.

And he liked it.

Dammit, he _liked it._

Yahaba raised his own hand and touched the fingers on his chest. Even Kyoutani’s fingers were strong, his nails were clean and kept short, and his knuckles were large and round. He stroked the bones of his hand, from his knuckles to his wrist, each one.

And suddenly the owner of those fingers drew in a deep breath, coming awake, his hand clenching and his body stretching a little. He didn’t pull away, but nuzzled his nose in deeper in Yahaba’s hair, inhaling slowly.

Yahaba was still for a moment, unsure what to do. Finally, he whispered, “Good morning.”

Kyoutani’s body tensed, and it took him a long time before he moved. He pulled his hand away, shifting so he laid back, and Yahaba grumbled when the sheets went with him. He sat up, wincing, stretching, feeling his vertebrae pop and settle correctly into place.

Morning light filtered in through the blinds, and Yahaba turned to look at Kyoutani, and surprised to find that he didn’t look any different in the morning. Because he didn’t, and because Yahaba still didn’t know what the morning would bring, he threw the blankets on top of Kyoutani, crawling to the end of the bed and laying down on his belly to grab his pants from the floor and dig his phone out. He had _several_ texts from the other dancers that he was close to, and even from Suga and Akaashi. Alisa, too, had texted him; Ennoshita, Kaori, and Oikawa, all asking if he found the person he was looking for.

Seeing Suga’s text, he laughed aloud. _did u tap that?_

The bed shifted as Kyoutani sat up, and Yahaba jumped when his hand spread on his calf, and slid up his thigh. “What’s funny?”

Yahaba didn’t want to admit to himself just how much he liked Kyoutani’s hands on him. “My friends have all texted me to ask if I found you.”

Kyoutani rumbled a little, his knuckles brushing up and down the back of his thigh. “Do they know about me? We only met last night.”

Yahaba giggled, partially because he was ticklish, and partially because he remembered Akaashi’s face when he rushed out of class. “Well…” he began, huffing out a laugh again. “So, last night my friends were watching a video of some dance contest at your club, and—”

“Who was dancing? There are a lot of people that come there.”

“I don’t know their name.” He looked back, saw Kyoutani looking at his ass, and smiled. “But you were on the video. And I asked my friend where that club was and I ran out of ballet class to come find you.”

Kyoutani grinned, and leaned down and pressed a kiss to the small of his back.

It was _unbelievably_ soft, and Yahaba’s heart squeezed in his chest at the gesture.

“And you found me.”

Yahaba nodded, dropping his head to the bed to hide his smile. “I sure did.”

Kyoutani’s mouth inched lower, kissing one cheek of his ass.

Yahaba pushed himself up on his elbows to turn and look at him. Did Kyoutani forget how _rude_ he was last night? He frowned at him, and watched as Kyoutani kissed his way down his leg. “Stop,” he said. “What are you doing?”

Kyoutani looked up, raising his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

Yahaba sighed, shaking his head and rolling away from him. He swung his legs out of bed, shivering a bit because Kyoutani kept his apartment cold. “I’m not having sex with you again. I _hurt_ all over.”

Kyoutani chuckled, looking him up and down. “I wasn’t trying to have sex. I was just admiring you.”

Yahaba squinted at him, dubious. “You hurt my feelings last night.” He’d learned, in the course of his life, that honesty _was_ the best policy, and if he was honest with himself, he _was_ still upset.

Kyoutani frowned back at him. “What do you mean? You said you were okay.”

“Not the —” Yahaba huffed. “Not that. After.”

Kyoutani watched him, confused, before he rolled his eyes. “I told you I don’t cuddle.”

“You _sure as shit do_ ,” Yahaba snapped back, and was rewarded when Kyoutani blushed. “Look, I get it if you ex messed up your expectations or whatever, but you shouldn’t take that out on me.”

Kyoutani blinked at him, his cheeks going redder, and looked away. They were quiet for a long time, and Kyoutani finally said, “I haven’t been with anyone since he broke up with me.”

He’d thought as much, and he knew he had no right to expect anything from this man he’d practically stalked. “That doesn’t mean you have to be rude to me.”

“I wasn’t rude, I was honest.”

“You were _rude_.” Yahaba scoffed and stood, annoyed because Kyoutani only scowled at him. He went to the bathroom to splash water on his face, and caught his reflection in the mirror. He _stared_ , having to take a moment to take it all in.

Bruises — hickies! — seven of them all in a neat row, dotted the side of his neck and wound all the way down to his shoulder. On the other side they weren’t as neat, instead sporadic and messy. They were all dark purple, three of them high on his throat, _impossible_ to hide. “Kentarou!” Yahaba shrieked, outraged. “You —” he started, but found that he had absolutely no idea how to articulate how annoyed he was. He stomped out of the bathroom to see Kyoutani grinning on the bed. “Do you _see!?_ ” He pointed to the marks on him.

Kyoutani laughed, standing, and moving closer. Yahaba stood his ground, scowling at him to show how annoyed he was, but Kyoutani’s smile only widened. He put his hands on Yahaba’s hips and walked him backwards to the bathroom. “Look.”

Yahaba frowned up at him. “At what?”

Kyoutani raised his eyebrows, flicking his gaze to the mirror behind them. When Yahaba turned his head to look, he gasped aloud and slapped Kyoutani’s chest, hard, but he only laughed, even though Yahaba’s palm stung.

“You left a hickey on my _ass!”_

Kyoutani looked proud of himself, and he reached both hands down to cup his ass and pull him close. “It looks good on you.”

Yahaba rolled his eyes, ass stinging with his grip on the bruise. “I can’t _believe you_. I can’t hide these!” He motioned to his throat and Kyoutani’s eyes followed the path he made and hummed appreciatively.

“I like them.”

“I’m so angry with you!” But… he wasn’t. Not really. Damn him.

Kyoutani knew it too. “Let me make it up to you. Are you hungry?” He squeezed Yahaba’s ass, and Yahaba didn’t pull away. If he was honest with himself… he liked Kyoutani’s hands anywhere on him.

“...No,” he said. As if on cue, his stomach let out a loud, embarrassing noise. “Goddammit.”

Kyoutani laughed aloud. “I’ll take you to breakfast.” He kissed Yahaba’s shoulder, over one of the bruises he’d left. “I’ll even find you a nice scarf.”

 

* * *

 

The scarf in question had a pattern of sunflowers on an azure background. It was lovely, and soft, and it looked good on him.

And Yahaba hated it. “This does not look like anything you would own,” he had said when Kyoutani had dug it out of a bin under his bed.

Kyoutani had kept his face carefully blank. “It was a gift. I never wear it, anyway.”

Yahaba noticed that he always had the same tense set to his mouth and tightness to his eyes whenever he talked about the ex. He thought that maybe the scarf had been a gift from the ex, and Kyoutani had just never tossed the scarf out.

He supposed it was a good thing, considering it wasn’t exactly scarf weather and the scarf was fashionable rather than functional and its current function involved covering the plethora of bruises. It did its job well… except for the one that was just under his ear, right at the junction of his jawbone. That was impossible to hide.

And, _if he was being honest with himself…_ he didn’t want to hide it.

They were walking towards a breakfast place Kyoutani said he liked. He’d given Yahaba not only the scarf, but a warm jacket and clean shirt. He was too short for Yahaba to wear his pants… which was unfortunate, because Yahaba’s underwear was dirty and he was going commando and his jeans were _not_ comfortable.

“It’s just here,” Kyoutani said, motioning to a door and opening it for him.

When they stepped inside, the air was cool and thick with the scent of cooking foods, sausages and eggs, coffee brewing on the counter and fluffy breads baking in ovens. It made his stomach clench and make another loud noise. “Oh, your wallet is about to be lighter,” Yahaba said, since Kyoutani had promised him breakfast.

Kyoutani smiled at him, once again in his boots and standing a fraction taller than him. “That’s fine, I don’t —“

“Hey!” Someone called, and they both glanced over towards the sound. It came from a big, broad shouldered man with spiked up black and white hair. “Kyoutani! DJ! Come sit with us!”

Kyoutani’s face twisted, but he looked annoyed more than upset and Yahaba laughed. “That’s my friend with him,” he told him. “It’ll be fun.” When Kyoutani didn’t immediately move towards the table Yahaba took his hand and walked towards the table, pulling him in tow.

Akaashi stood from one side of the table and moved to sit beside the man so that Yahaba could coax Kyoutani into the other side of the booth.

“So you found him?” Akaashi asked, smiling between them once they’d seated themselves.

Yahaba grinned, glancing over at Kyoutani. “Yeah, I did. I saw your text, thanks for worrying about me.”

“But you seem okay,” Akaashi said, raising both eyebrows. “Oh, sorry; this is Bokuto. Bokuto, this is my friend and one of the dancers in my class - Yahaba.”

Bokuto beamed at him, then wiggled his eyebrows at Kyoutani. “ _Dancers,_ am I right?” He held up a hand to Kyoutani, and his smile was so genuinely excited that grumpy Kyoutani actually cracked a smile and slapped his palm half heartedly.

“Dancers,” he agreed.

Akaashi dropped his head into his hands and rubbed at his face. “Bo, stop it. You’re embarrassing me.”

Bokuto took a sip of the drink he had… which Yahaba thought was some sort of milkshake. What sort of person drank milkshakes at nine in the morning? “Sorry, Keiji.” But he didn’t sound too apologetic.

When Bokuto didn’t seem inclined to introduce them, Yahaba said, “Kyoutani, this is my teacher, Akaashi.” He assumed that Kyoutani and Bokuto knew each other, and didn’t feel comfortable introducing Bokuto, anyway.

A waitress came to their table to take their drink orders, and when she left Yahaba found Akaashi staring curiously at him. “What?”

Akaashi squinted, then, in a flash, he reached out and tugged the scarf away from Yahaba’s throat. He gasped when he saw the marks, three on one side and two on the other.

Yahaba snatched the scarf back, face burning, wrapping it back around his throat.

Bokuto’s eyes were wide, his smile broad, and glancing at Kyoutani. Akaashi pressed his mouth together, trying not to laugh. “Did you lose a fight with a really _feisty_ octopus, Yahaba?”

Yahaba snorted, tying the scarf and adjusting it to cover most of the bruises, then pointing at Kyoutani. “No, it was a mad dog.”

Kyoutani puffed up in aggravation at the nickname, about to snarl at Yahaba when Bokuto snorted a loud laugh and slapped the table.

“You’re kinky!” he said, giddy.

All three of them stared at him, Akaashi shaking his head with derision. “This is why I can’t take you anywhere.”

Bokuto leaned over, putting an arm around him and kissing his cheek. “You love me.”

Yahaba had never seen that particular look of adoration on Akaashi’s face, and thought it suited him rather well. Yahaba remembered Bokuto coming into the studio all those months ago, and how flustered Akaashi had been, even though he tried to hide it. It looked like it was all working out for his teacher.

Their drinks came, and they ordered food at the same time that Bokuto and Akaashi’s food arrived. Bokuto immediately reached over and tried to steal several large boiled eggs, only managing to snatch one because Akaashi was slapping at his hands.

“Stop that, you glutton!”

Yahaba looked over at Kyoutani, whispering, “See? Dancers are protective of their food. It’s a good thing you never tried to take mine. It could have gotten violent.”

Kyoutani raised his eyebrow. “You don't seem violent.”

“You’ve never tried to take my food.”

They ate, all talking companionably, if with a few awkward pauses, Bokuto regaling Yahaba with their dance contest and how he and Kyoutani had met several years ago at the club when Bokuto had leapt off one of the raised platforms and crashed into the soundboard, almost destroying everything. Then having both Kyoutani _and_ Kenma yelling at him.

“You are a force of nature,” Akaashi said, sipping his coffee. Akaashi liked his coffee boiling and black, no sugar, no cream. Yahaba thought _he_ was a force of nature for being able to stomach it. He always liked too much sugar than was healthy and half a cup of cream. “Bo,” Akaashi said as he looked at his watch (which Yahaba was jealous of), “We have to go soon. I have my morning classes to teach."

Bokuto nodded, digging out his wallet. “I can drop you off."

"I've got to go to my apartment first to get clean clothes." And when Bokuto reached for both the tickets at the end of the table he snapped, “Stop that. They don’t need your magic money.”

“It’s not magic, it’s—”

Akaashi snatched Kyoutani and Yahaba’s ticket and slapped it on the table. “I know, it’s your _thieving_ money. They don’t need it.”

Kyoutani took his ticket and slid it over to himself. “I can pay for our own food, thank you.” He said it calmly, but Yahaba liked the confidence with which he said it.

Akaashi slid out of the booth and smiled at Yahaba. “I’ll see you in class?”

Yahaba felt his face heating up and could only meet Akaashi’s eyes for a moment. “Uh — next week.” He flicked his gaze at Kyoutani, who was chewing on a long piece of bacon and watching him with raised eyebrows. “Maybe.”

Bokuto laughed as he stepped out of the booth, too. “Damn, ‘kaashi, you don’t put out like that.”

Akaashi punched his arm, red as a tomato, and stalked out, a grinning Bokuto following after he paid for their meal. When they were gone, Yahaba leaned back, smiling at Kyoutani.

“So, this is two meals you’ve bought for me.”

Kyoutani’s smile was devious. “You think I’ll make you pay me back?”

“I’d like to.” He paused, tugging at the scarf a bit. “But not with cash.”

He snorted, sitting up and pushing his empty plate away. “Well, I think we can arrange something.”

Yahaba reached over, trailing his thumb up his throat in a touch so light he saw the goose-flesh raise on Kyoutani’s arms. “I’ve bought time with my teacher. I’ve got to go home… you could come see my place. I’ve got a nice big bathtub.” He leaned close, kissing his shoulder and watching the way he bit his lip with desire. “And I can teach you a few more things.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End!! Thanks for reading! It was originally supposed to be a short smut piece to get the words flowing when I was feeling writers block.... and look what it became. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, hahaha I thought I could do just four chapters of KyouHaba. I was WRONG. Things will still be nice and sexy, but these next five chapters will also have lots of feelings and emotions in them! Please enjoy! Let me know what you think >u>

They stepped outside the restaurant, stopping just beside the door so Yahaba could lean against the wall and rub his belly. “Mhm, that was delicious. Thank you.”

“You earned it,” Kyoutani glanced over, leaning beside him.

Yahaba chuckled, turning his face up to the sun, warm and full and happy. He had liked just sitting with Kyoutani, talking. It had been mostly about breakfast, but still, it was nice. “So, do you want to go see my big bathtub?” he said, reaching out to brush his knuckles up Kyoutani’s shoulder.

“No,” Kyoutani said, distracted with doing something on his phone.

Yahaba blinked at him, pulling his hand away. Disappointment carved a place for itself in his chest, along with its brothers embarrassment and anger. He felt like a bought and paid for sex sleeve that had been all used up and tossed aside. “Well, okay then,” he said, unable to think of anything else to say he was so hurt.

He realized that his dirty underwear was still at Kyoutani’s apartment, and if their relationship (he wouldn’t call it a friendship just yet, but he didn’t know what to call it at all— nothing at this point, apparently) was over… then he wouldn’t get them back. It didn’t bother him, but he wondered if they’d end up in the trash or in some bin under Kyoutani’s bed somewhere.

Kyoutani held out his phone to him and Yahaba saw on the screen that he’d opened a fresh contact page and in the first name slot he’d written: _Creampuff_.

The laugh that burst out of him was sharp, and unexpected. “The fuck?” He said pleasantly, taking the phone and entering his number into it. Then, because he thought it was funny, scrolled through the emojis until he found one that looked vaguely like a creampuff, and sushi, and—because it had never been used to reference anything but a dick—an eggplant.

He handed it back and Kyoutani stared at it, the corners of his mouth twitching in a smile as he accepted the page and sent Yahaba a text. “There. That’s my number.” He looked up. “I’ve got to go run some errands, but I’d like to see your tub later.”

“Yeah?” He didn’t know if Kyoutani could hear the breathy excitement in his voice — but yes, yes he could; it showed in the way his eyes crinkled around the edges. “Okay,” he said, reaching up, thinking about undoing the scarf to return it, even though it could potentially be an embarrassing trip home.

But Kyoutani stepped closer, reaching up and laying his hands over Yahaba’s, stroking his thumb over his knuckles. “Keep it,” he said, eyeing the way their hands touched. “It looks pretty on you.”

Yahaba frowned at him. “Is it going to remind you of your ex anytime I wear it?” And when Kyoutani stepped back, he grabbed his wrist and said, “I’ll keep it on my way home so that no one thinks I was _mauled_ , you brute, but when you come over later we’re going to burn it.”

Kyoutani gave him a long, lingering look then pulled his hand away. “I’ll call you when I’m done?”

“I’d like that.”

After Kyoutani left, Yahaba found a cab and made his way to his apartment. It was in the middle of the city, high up in what he considered one of the nicer buildings. His parents had promised him they would pay his way as long as he continued to do well in school. It was a good arrangement for now, even if he hated his classes…but he had a nice apartment, they paid for his dance classes, and most of his food… plus, he got an allowance. Not bad for spending a few days a week hunched over a laptop entering numbers and learning banking algorithms.

Inside his apartment —cream colored walls, soft plush white carpet, his art decorating the walls in thin, colorful frames, the lemon balm plant he kept in the windowsill giving off the faintest scent of sweet, ripe citrus, and the big French window where he kept his easels— he pushed off his shoes on the little shoe rack he kept by the door, then wandered into his bathroom.

Before he took the scarf off he snapped a selfie (after carefully hiding the bruises with deliberate twists of fabric) and sent it to his mother, just to let her know he was still alive and kicking.

He took a perfunctory shower in which he washed his face and brushed his teeth, his _molars_ hurting when he realized the last time he’d done it had been just before he left for dance class. Then as he was changing into his soft, comfortable lounging-around-the-house clothes, thinking he’d maybe take a nap, his mother responded: _looks good on you. where did you get it?_

 _nowhere,_ he typed back.  _i’m going to burn it. i hate it_

_son, no. don’t start fires._

Yahaba dropped the scarf on the floor and kicked it under the lip of the counter.

His mother texted, _and how are your classes? will I see you sometime soon?_

But he didn’t answer, opting instead to drop his phone onto the bed and plug it in to charge. He went back out to his living room and flopped down on the couch, maybe he’d put on a movie and nap here. Absently, he rubbed at his legs where they were still stiff. Having sex with Kyoutani was more strenuous than a full week of performances, or running a marathon, and he thought he’d need at _least_ a week to recover… but Kyoutani was coming over tonight. He smiled, glancing up at his art set up in the window, bathed in light, and suddenly wanted to paint. Or draw, or get his fingers dirty with colorful pastels — maybe he could attempt to capture the exact honey brown color of Kyoutani’s eyes.

His art set up was a wild and jumbled mess: a series of blank canvases leaned against the wall, and sketchbooks of every size and type on and around his giant shelved desk; pencils, charcoal sticks, special thin tipped pens, bottles of black ink, too many stained cloths and cups of old, murky water, paint brushes drying on the edge, and boxes and boxes of pastels and colored charcoal, colored pencils, acrylic and oil paints, all sorts of tape and broken rulers… all his _real_ hopes and dreams packed into one corner of his apartment, waiting for him to come to them. He had two easels set up, one with a big blank paint canvas, and the other with a larger than life sketchbook and a half finished fantastical animal he’d been working on one night, waking up from a panicked nightmare and _needing_ to draw it to make it stop scratching at the inside of his brain.

And, all of a sudden… he wanted to draw Kyoutani. He wanted to feel the lines of his body coming to life from his fingers. He moved to the canvas, touching the soft cotton of it, pulled tight over the frame. He could see how it would come out— _his_ Kyoutani, the way the muscles could be shaded, the dark colors of his hair, the sharp, focused intensity of his eyes. He reached towards his desk, blindly searching where he knew his charcoal drawer was, and when he found it pressed the tip of the small stick against the white canvas, taking only a moment to think before he drew short, arching lines that captured the movement of his body — lounging, laying back, the strength of his chest, the curve of his calf, the slope of his stomach.

He lost himself in the sketch, forgetting how much is body hurt from last night, darkening the lines of his form, softening with his fingers the hills and valleys of the muscles in his torso, even trying to capture the look of the fine, curly hairs on his legs… and what was between them. He drew Kyoutani naked, because that was the way he’d spent the most time with the man, and he rather liked him naked.

Kyoutani’s eyes he draw carefully, spending so long staring at them that he could almost see them coming to life — as if the man was right in front of him. He was so focused that he didn’t hear his phone ringing at first, humming on the bed in the other room, and only heard it when it clattered to the floor, bouncing off the leg of the bedside table. He rushed in and picked it up, the black of the charcoal spreading on the screen as he swiped the call to answer.

“Hey,” he said into the phone, “sorry, I didn’t hear my phone…”

Kyoutani’s voice had the barest hint of amusement, but it was still tight with something — suppressed anger? “Thought you were ignoring me.”

“Of course not,” Yahaba huffed. “I just didn’t— ugh, anyway. Are you still coming over?”

“I’d like to.”

“I’ll text you my address.” He paused, realizing that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. “Bring lunch?”

“What do you want?”

“There’s a Sukiya down the road from me.”

“Just text me what you want, I’ll bring it.”

 

* * *

 

Yahaba thought it would take him longer to get there, so the knock at the door had him jumping in surprise, and rushing to take the sketch off and slide it behind some others to keep it safely hidden. He didn’t bother much cleaning other than wiping his hands on a cloth before he went to open the door, and when he did he found Kyoutani on the other side, standing back and looking down the hall as if he was worried he was at the wrong door.

“Hi,” Yahaba said, smiling.

Kyoutani stepped into the apartment, sliding one hand up to Yahaba’s throat and holding his jaw with his thumb while he kissed him. His fingers pressed into the back of Yahaba’s neck, holding him captive, and Yahaba sighed into his mouth, letting Kyoutani work his mouth open and dip his tongue in, tracing the sensitive underside of his own so that he shivered a little.

When Kyoutani pulled away to look at him he cocked his head in confusion. “You’ve got dirt on your face.”

Yahaba blinked, confused, then stepped away to glance in the mirror in the living room and glance at his reflection. He had charcoal smudges across his cheek and on the tip of his nose. He laughed, wiping it off before coming back. “It’s just my —” but he stopped when he saw Kyoutani peering at one of his paintings hanging in the hall, the bag of food forgotten in his fingers. “I really like that one.”

Kyoutani nodded, searching the painting, mesmerized. It was one he had done last year, after he was a part of the chorus for Swan Lake for a season. He had painted it on a wide, long canvas, capturing the low fog that had rolled across the stage during one of the acts, completely by accident, some malfunction with the machine, as the famous scene with the thirty two fouettés had been performed, which whipped the fog around in great, swirling tendrils. He had painted them with swirls of silver and blue, floating up around Odile like a tornado. Her costume was all black, tiny intricate feathers all along her arms and a long, delicate skirt that fluttered around her. Most of the painting was _texture_ more than form, he’d built up layers of oil paints to deepen the shadows.

“It’s really cool,” Kyoutani said, reaching up, as if to touch it, but then realized he shouldn’t and lowering his hand. He turned and saw several other paintings and framed drawings hung up in the hallway and took a moment to look at each of them.

Finally, because he could tell that Kyoutani wanted to ask but couldn’t figure out how to do it without embarrassing himself incase he was wrong, Yahaba said, “I did them all, yeah.” He stepped forward and took the food bag from him and turned, heading into the apartment and crooking his finger to get Kyoutani to follow him. He moved through the living room and into the kitchen, white cabinets and clean counters, tiny potted cacti in the window, a few dishes in the sink, and began unpacking their meal. “We can eat in the living room, if you want.”

Kyoutani stood looking around at the pictures and somehow neat-looking clutter of his apartment. “You sure?”

“Yea,” Yahaba handed him his food, “I do it all the time.” So he nudged Kyoutani out of the kitchen and back to the couch and pulled the top of his coffee table up so it was dining height. “See?”

“Ah, neat.” Kyoutani sat beside him and unpacked his box of food, glancing over as Yahaba did the same and laid a hand on his leg when Yahaba slid his feet over Kyoutani’s lap. “What’s with you and salmon?”

“I love it,” Yahaba said simply. He broke his chopsticks and took a big bite of the pink fish to prove his point.

Kyoutani chuckled, shaking his head as he dug into his own food. “So, you’re a painter?”

“Mhm…” Yahaba had to take a second to chew another big bite. “Yes, and no. I mean I _paint_ and do sketches and stuff, but technically I’m in school for mathematics— like, banking and international cooperation. All that business-y crap.”

Kyoutani raised his eyebrows, his rice only halfway to his mouth. “So, you’re like really smart?”

Snorting, shaking his head: “No. I just follow the rules of numbers. It’s not hard.”

“Hard to me…” Kyoutani mumbled through his next mouthful. “I also notice a lack of trains.”

Yahaba almost choked on his food, and pressed a napkin over his mouth as he laughed. “No, no trains for me, either. Just a lot of art shit.”

“I see that. And you did all of these?” He motioned to the wall art around the apartment.

“Yeah — there’s a few from some friends, but most of them are mine. Sometimes I can’t stop painting… and I can’t sell it all. So I don’t know what else to do with it.”

Kyoutani was looking over at his art corner, studying it with interest. “Well, my walls are blank.”

Yahaba blinked at him, stunned. “You’d want one of my paintings?”

“I could buy it if—”

“No, no,” he said quickly. “You can have whatever you want. If”—he felt his face flushing—“you really want it.”

Kyoutani smiled at him. “I think I would.” He took another bite of his food, chewing as his gaze flicked from one painting to another. “Do you have a favorite?”

“If I had a favorite,” Yahaba grinned, “why would I give you that one?”

“A second favorite then?”

“How about I just paint you something special?”

Kyoutani looked over at him, one eyebrow quirked. “What would it be?”

“Anything you want.”

“How about a self portrait — of your sex face.”

Yahaba snorted a laugh and kicked his leg with his heel. “No!” He stuffed more food in his mouth, and then covered his face with his hand as he said, “Besides, I don’t know what it looks like.”

Kyoutani said thoughtfully, “Do you have one of those big mirrors? We could try it so you could see—”

“Oh my God, stop.” Yahaba was giggling, and kicked him again when Kyoutani wiggled his eyebrows at him — oddly reminiscent of Bokuto from that morning’s breakfast. They ate while they talked, Kyoutani asking about Yahaba’s dancing—ballet, a little bit of ballroom, touch of tap— and school, which Yahaba didn’t want to talk about for long because it was only a means to an end for him… the end being his parents keeping him fed and clothed and housed when they thought that he’d go into banking like his father. He told Kyoutani how he had paintings sold to many of the small businesses around the city, and was trying to arrange a small gallery exhibit at an art show in a few months, and how what he really wanted to do was say fuck business and numbers and paint for a living, surviving off his own work instead of his parents’ money, wandering the countryside for inspiration like painters of old.

Kyoutani told him, in starts and stops (he really was a private person) how he worked at the club most nights, and for a local moving company during the day ( _that's how he's so goddamn ripped_ , Yahaba thought to himself), leaving him with only one or two days off a week, but usually he never had a full day off work unless the schedule lined up perfectly. Luckily for Yahaba, that day _was_ today, so Kyoutani could stay the night if he wanted him to. He was trying to save up money to go back to school, and it took several long minutes of coaxing and throwing pieces of rice at him before Kyoutani told him that he wanted to go to veterinary school. Yahaba had gushed happily at that, loving the idea of Kyoutani taking care of all animals big and small.

The food was mostly gone, and Kyoutani leaned back and stroked his knuckles up and down Yahaba’s socked foot. He’d slowly gone quieter, his answers becoming shorter, and now he sat silent and brooding while Yahaba finished his food. Yahaba was content to let him sit for a while, but finally he pushed the top of the table back down into place and wiggled his toes to get his attention. “What’s up?”

He didn’t answer for a moment, touching Yahaba’s toes. “Nothing.”

“Something,” Yahaba said, curling them around his finger.

“I —” But Kyoutani stopped, laying a hand across his foot.

Again, Yahaba could practically see the thoughts flicker across his face. “Did I say something that reminded you of him?” The skin around Kyoutani’s eyes tensed, before he tried to force them back to normal. Yahaba said, “Don’t do that. Come on. Tell me. I’ll just bother you until you do. I don’t like you being grumpy.”

Kyoutani cut his eyes over to him. “I’m not —”

“You are,” Yahaba told him, nudging him with his heel again.

With an exaggerated roll of his eyes, Kyoutani leaned back, looking away and closing off from him. Yahaba frowned, taking a long moment to think, before he leaned forward, laying his arms across his knees and laying his cheek on them. “Hey, so, I know you’re not supposed to swim fifteen minutes after eating, but what about a bath?” Kyoutani barely turned his head to look down at him, he was clearly upset, possibly angry judging by the extreme tilt to one of his eyebrows. “Come on,” Yahaba said, sliding off the couch and taking Kyoutani’s hand to pull him along behind him.

He went through his bedroom and into the slightly cramped bathroom, making a show of presenting his favorite amenity of the apartment: the jacuzzi tub.

It went over well, Kyoutani’s eyes widening a little. “Why do you have this?” His voice was tight with how upset he still was.

Yahaba grinned at him. “The couple that owned this place before me were old and pretty well off, so that’s why all the appliances in the kitchen are new, and why there’s a standing shower _and_ this tub. Turns out being old and being a dancer have the same remedy — soaking your bones.”

The tub was big enough for two people… unless you wanted to sit in each other’s laps, then it could easily be four or five. Six if you _really_ liked each other. It had a lounge seat on either side, with jets that could massage feet, legs, all along the back, shoulders and, if you sank really low, your neck, too. It was ninety percent of the reason Yahaba had chosen this particular apartment.

“I don’t know about you,” he said to Kyoutani, “but my muscles are still sore, so I’d like to use it. Join me?”

“…Sure.”

So he leaned down to turn on the water, all hot, steaming as it roared from the faucet. He turned and saw that Kyoutani had already yanked his shirt off, and was pleased to see that he hadn’t escaped marks from the night before, either. He had several long, pale pink scratches along his sides and up his back where Yahaba had drug his nails across skin. Kyoutani paused and reached down, picking up the discarded scarf from this morning and pulling the fabric through his fingers. Yahaba scowled, reaching over and snatching it from his hand. “I told you we were going to burn it,” he said, and tossed it in a corner.

Kyoutani raised an eyebrow. “You were serious?”

“Of course,” Yahaba snapped, taking off his own shirt. “Now take your clothes off.”

He knew he had no right to be jealous… they weren’t anything, they weren’t _dating_ … but Kyoutani was here, with _him_ , not the stupid ex who had hurt him. It wasn’t fair … Yahaba wanted his full attention, selfish as it was, and wanted to wash the memories of the ex away. When the water was almost full he turned the heat down and reached in to swirl a splash of cold in, and dropped one of the round, foaming bath bombs in that smelled of honey and lemons and made big, thick bubbles. Then he grabbed Kyoutani’s wrist and pulled him over, pointing to the other side of the tub. “Get in. Tell me how good it is.”

Kyoutani shook his head, but did as he was told, carefully stepping into the large tub and sinking down in one of the carved chairs. He looked a bit pained at the heat of the water, but didn’t complain, saying only, “Very comfortable.”

“Damn right.” Yahaba climbed in after him, about to sit on the other chair, but Kyoutani reached out and slid a hand around his hip, pulling him over to straddle his lap. Yahaba settled over his legs, his skin tingling where their bare thighs touched, and arched a little when Kyoutani’s hands slid over his back. “Whoah, now, does eating just make you horny or something?” he said, gasping a little. “I want to talk to you.”

“ _You_ make me horny,” Kyoutani said, his palms sliding up Yahaba’s sides, cupping his ribs before moving back down, molding against his skin.

“I’m flattered.” Yahaba took his hands in each of his to make Kyoutani stop touching him. “Tell me what happened to make you so upset?”

Before Kyoutani could look away Yahaba released one of his hands to reach up and tuck his fingers under his chin.

“Talk to me.”

“I’m not upset.”

“You are. You’re not a hard read, buddy.” He shifted in Kyoutani’s lap, sliding his hand down to rest on his chest. “Look. I know we’re not close, but I’d like to be.” He waited a moment, but Kyoutani didn’t say anything, only stared at him. “You seem like a good guy, and we have pretty good sex, so I’d like to get to know you a little. That involves talking… and not having you fuck your feelings for your ex into me, cause that hurts. And I don’t particularly like being the third wheel.”

Kyoutani frowned at him, and his body tight and stiff. Yahaba turned his hand up, tracing each line of his palm with a fingertip. Then he realized the water was getting dangerously close to over-full, so he reached over and turned it off — the silence that followed ringing in his ears after the roaring of the faucet.

“So… tell me what upset you.” He paused. “Please.”

Kyoutani scowled at him, raising his chin a little in defiance, unwilling to speak. So Yahaba simply smiled at him, sinking more comfortably down on his legs, and waited. He’s learned that sometimes a probing, intentional silence worked better than a hundred questions.

The water was so high it was up around his chest, and every motion of his hands on Kyoutani’s palm made the water shift and splash. He traced the lines of his palm, to the tips of his fingers and back again, waiting. Kyoutani had a little scar just under his middle finger and Yahaba wanted to know how he got it, but resigned himself to asking later.

And finally, after several long minutes of purposeful silence, Kyoutani said in a low, frustrated voice, “I saw him today.”

Yahaba nodded, because he had figured something of the sort, but he didn’t say anything, waiting for Kyoutani to continue.

“He was with someone else.” He refused to meet Yahaba’s eye. “And they looked happy.”

“Ah,” Yahaba muttered. He pulled Kyoutani’s hand up and pressed a kiss to his palm to reward him for telling him. His fingers twitched against his cheek, but he seemed unsure if he wanted to caress his face or not. “Well, how long’s it been?”

“… almost a year.”

Yahaba kissed his pinky. “And you’re still hurting…” he sighed, kissed his ring finger. “I know it’s hard.” Pressing a kiss to the middle finger now. “I know it hurts.” His index finger. “I _know._ ” And drawing his thumb up to kiss it, too. “But he’s moved on. You have to let him go.”

Kyoutani stared at him, his jaw working, grinding his teeth in frustration.

Yahaba let the sharp point of his canine nip into the pad of his thumb. Then he said, “You can’t let _him_ determine who _you_ are.”

Kyoutani’s eyes flashed, a sudden and fierce understanding. They stared at each other, only the fizzy sound of the bubbles forming and popping around them. Yahaba wiggled closer, slouching his legs wider to let more of his weight rest on Kyoutani’s thighs, and Kyoutani’s free hand slid down to rest on his hip, holding him there.

“There’s so much left to experience if you just let yourself enjoy the world… and not let his memory hold you back.” Yahaba whispered, kissing the heel of his hand, knowing that he could show Kyoutani a number of things, some sexual, most not, that he thought he would enjoy. Like the pier that had fishing rods you could rent, or the beach nearby where they could search for shells, or his favorite little shop that sold antiques and smelled of times long past, his favorite reading nook in the city library, baked warm from the sun and smelling of thousands of unread words, and his favorite art museum, filled with the canvases where artists bared their souls to the world.

“I know,” Kyoutani muttered.

“You can’t let his ghost dictate your emotions.”

Kyoutani glanced away, his fingers squeezing Yahaba’s hip. His entire body was a tightly wound coil.

“Kentarou,” Yahaba whispered, his palm following the muscle of his arm and up to his shoulder, across his collarbone, “If you need to talk about it, if you need to speak the memories so they stop haunting you… we can talk about it.” He didn’t _want_ to know about this other man, but if it helped Kyoutani move past it… he could listen, at least.

Kyoutani didn’t answer for a long time, looking into the bubbles as if he was seeing into his memories. And Yahaba waited, one hand holding Kyoutani’s hand against his face, the other laid gently over his throat, just to feel the warmth of his skin.

When Kyoutani did speak, it was just a whisper, rough from emotion. “No. I don’t want to do that. Let’s talk about something else…”

Yahaba nodded, letting his hand go when he pulled it away, running his finger over Yahaba’s chest. “Alright. What do you do when you’re not working?”

“Hm?”

Yahaba rolled his eyes, smiling. “Today. What did you do? What do you do when you’re not at work?”

“Oh,” Kyoutani said. “I want to the market today. Needed food.”

“Mhm-hmm.” Yahaba leaned forward, brushing his nose across Kyoutani’s cheek. “Is that the only thing you do when you don’t work?”

Kyoutani rumbled under him, and Yahaba _already_ recognized it as the noise he made when he was fighting with himself over whether or not to tell him something. So Yahaba kissed his temple to encourage him, pushing his hands through his damp hair.

“Mhmmm…” Kyoutani hummed, hesitating.

Yahaba breathed softly against his skin, smiling to himself, and pressed his lips to the curve of his ear. “Tell me, please?”

Kyoutani sighed, his hands moving around to the small of his back, pulling him closer so he could tuck his face into Yahaba’s neck. “There’s this… animal shelter… that needs volunteers…”—Yahaba saw his ears going a deep, pretty shade of red—“to … spend time with some of the animals.”

Yahaba kissed his way across his cheek before pulling back to grin at him. “You play with the little animals so they’re not alone all day?”

Kyoutani’s face was beet red, but he looked happy. “Yes.”

And Yahaba couldn’t stop the smile on his face, pulling at the corners of his eyes. He bit his lip, giggling. “That’s wonderful,” he said, pleased when Kyoutani smiled back. “Maybe I could go with you sometime?”

Kyoutani raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You’d want to do that?”

“Why, sure. Who wouldn’t want to play with baby animals?”

“Well…” Kyoutani stretched one hand up his spine, pressing against each of his vertebrae. “Some of them are sick… or hurt.” The genuine pain in his voice made Yahaba touch a kiss between his eyebrows to soothe him.

“Then they deserve our love even more, don’t you think?” he said, kissing his nose.

The smile began in Kyoutani’s eyes, and his lips twitched with it. “I do.”

Yahaba smiled back at him, his thumbs moved his jaw and tilted his face up to give him a proper kiss. It was sweet, and soft, nothing rushed about it, and it made the heat of the water feel even closer. Kyoutani’s lips were pliant and sweet under him, and he made gentle noises in his throat when Yahaba took a moment to pull away and drag his lips over to the corners of his mouth. He wrapped his arms around Yahaba’s waist and pulled their bodies together. He was still tense and frustrated, and Yahaba hugged his arms around his neck, wanting to help him relax.

He kissed every part of skin he could reach, stroking his fingers through Kyoutani’s hair as Kyoutani pressed his mouth against the bruises he’d made last night. It didn’t hurt, not when he wasn’t actually kissing the discolored skin, but mouthing gently at them, moving from one to the next by breathing hot breath over his skin.

“Tell me—” Yahaba breathed, but Kyoutani cut him off before he could finish his sentence.

“No, your turn.”

Yahaba chuckled, tracing the outline of his ear with his nose. “What do you want to know?”

“Your paintings.” Kyoutani worked his mouth over Yahaba’s shoulder, kissing a particularly painful bruise and making Yahaba gasp a little, and soothing him with gentle strokes of his fingers over his hip.

“What — ah — what about them?”

Kyoutani moved his head back, his nose brushing over Yahaba’s collarbone, then upwards so Yahaba tilted his head back and leaned away to let him pepper kisses over the front of his throat. “Why’d you start paintin’?”

“Oh,” Yahaba hummed when Kyoutani found a particularly sensitive place and Kyoutani spent a few moments kissing it, dragging his tongue over the spot so Yahaba’s arms tightened around the back of his head. “I — uhm — When I was little … before I could even walk…” Talking was a bit more difficult than he thought it’d be with Kyoutani kissing up close to his ear, and his jaw, moving to the other side of his throat. “My parents had left me somewhere… with the nanny or in… a church or a temple or a garden… I — I don’t know. I could be imagining this whole thing but — oh, shit.” He shivered when Kyoutani’s hand spread wide, holding him still while he began nipping with his teeth, careful and gentle.

“I … it… the place had these pale white floors, and mirrors all around the walls. And — mhm — it had this stained glass dome as a ceiling. And I remember looking up at it, fascinated by all the colors. And the sun must have come out from behind the clouds because suddenly the colors exploded all around me.” He tilted his head back as far as it would go, leaning back, using Kyoutani as leverage to not fall back into the water, his hands around his neck and Kyoutani’s hands firmly holding his back. He opened his eyes, but instead of the flat, pebbled ceiling of his bathroom he saw the stained glass, how the colors bloomed and bled, coming to life as they bounced off the walls and the floor, surrounding him in a ocean of color — every color in the universe — all before him, touching him, caressing him, seeping into his skin, making his tiny brain fall instantly in love.

To this day he was still in awe of all the colors he’d seen, even if it had been in his imagination. But he didn’t think so. His voice was strained with how far back his head was, “I’ve been chasing those colors all my life… trying to capture them on paper, and canvas, and get them to whisper back that they love me, too.”

Kyoutani had turned his face to stroke his cheek over Yahaba’s arm, and was watching him with narrowed, intensely focused eyes.

Yahaba blushed suddenly, moving back to him — he hadn’t meant to say it aloud. Nervous laughter bubbled up out of him. “I mean — just, y’know. I want to be good at … uhm… colors.”

Kyoutani reached one hand up and cupped it around the back of Yahaba’s head, water pooling off his skin and dripping down his throat. He pulled Yahaba’s face down and touched their lips together in the same unhurried, sweet slowness Yahaba had used earlier. Kyoutani kissed him for so long that Yahaba found himself melting into him, letting his legs spread and curling over him, leaning into his chest.

When he pulled away, Kyoutani whispered, “That’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve said since I’ve known you, creampuff, and I’ve heard the sounds you make when you orgasm.”

And when Yahaba’s face scrunched up in displeasure Kyoutani barked a loud, echoing laugh, just once, and tugged him back when Yahaba attempted to pull away.

“I —” Yahaba huffed, aggravated. “I was just trying to be _honest_ and —”

“I know,” Kyoutani grinned, and pinched his side when he tried to twist out of his lap. “Stop that, come back. It was stupidly sweet. You really are all soft and gooey on the inside, aren’t you?”

Yahaba wouldn’t look at him, and folded his arms over his chest.

“But it makes sense,” Kyoutani said. “I’ve always thought that if you can’t give something your full”—he paused, squinting, trying to think of the word, but couldn’t seem to find it and started over, “If you half-ass something it’s not worth doing.”

Yahaba looked down at him, pursing his lips, unable to tell if Kyoutani was really making fun of him or just making light of Yahaba’s embarrassing pronouncement. “You didn’t have to laugh at me.”

Kyoutani’s mouth quirked up in a smirk and he snaked his arms around Yahaba’s waist, pulling him so tight against him that Yahaba actually had to swallow a gasp. He felt Kyoutani’s foot moving behind him, and then the sound of the drain plug being pulled and the water began to slower lower around them. As each inch of skin was exposed, the warm water dropping away, it left tiny bubbles clinging to his skin, popping softly, and Yahaba shivering in the cold air.

When they kissed this time, there was a hunger there. It was a low, simmering desire that stroked it’s way between them, warm and soft, sharp around the edges. Yahaba rocked his hips, closing the distance, so they both made different noises at the contact: Yahaba whining a little and Kyoutani growling low in his chest. Yahaba let out a moan, pressing his fingers into Kyoutani’s shoulders, and when Kyoutani’s tongue touched his lips he rocked again, wrapping around him, folding into him, dipping his tongue into his mouth and finding Kyoutani there— _right there_ —taking him in. Yahaba would drown in Kyoutani’s mouth if he could. His tongue licked along Yahaba’s, wet and heavy and like his fingers, probing where they could reach, exploring gently and insistently until Yahaba crooned and slumped against him, boneless with pleasure.

Kyoutani’s hands pressed into his back, up and down his spine, and he pulled his knees up so Yahaba fell even more against him with a little yelp. He reached between them as the water fell away and slipped his fingers around them, together, stroking slowly. Yahaba was only half-hard, but quickly growing, whimpering as he rocked into Kyoutani’s loose fist. The feeling of the both of them growing hard _together_ was too much, but Yahaba needed _more_. So much more.

“Feels good,” Yahaba murmured, pressing their foreheads together, his breath coming heavier. “I— I want…” he moaned, his eyes fluttering closed, clinging to Kyoutani’s shoulders.

Kyoutani’s eyes flashed up to him, smirking. He squeezed, and Yahaba moaned softly. Yahaba rolled his hips, and Kyoutani turned his face up to catch his lips in a fierce kiss, tugging his lip between his teeth. Against his mouth, breath on his lips, Kyoutani whispered, “Tell me what you want.”

Yahaba made a little desperate noise, deep in the back of his throat. “ _You_.”


	6. Chapter 6

Kyoutani was gentler than Yahaba would have thought as they climbed out of the bath. He took the towel and dried him off, slowly, kissing random places on his body as he went, leaving sweet little bursts of fire in his wake. He had Yahaba sit on the edge of the tub while he crouched in front of him, drying down his legs and taking care to dry each of his toes — making Yahaba giggle at the sensation.

“You’re being awfully nice.”

Kyoutani looked up, shrugging, wiggling Yahaba’s pinky toe in his fingers. “I’m not always grumpy.”

Yahaba pointed at him. “Ah-ha! So you admit you were!”

“Not another word about it.” Kyoutani shook his head.

Yahaba grinned, pleased and amused. He reached a hand down and brushed his fingers over Kyoutani’s cheek. “Come up here and kiss me.”

Instead of doing that Kyoutani raised surprised eyebrows.

“What?” Yahaba said, frowning. And when he didn't answer, only giving Yahaba a strange, brooding look he took a fistful of his hair to drag him up and said, “The hell? Just do it, weirdo.” And when they did kiss it was fierce, and fast, like they were both suffocating without the other’s breath. Kyoutani pulled away just so he could stand and yank Yahaba to his feet, and Yahaba took it one step further by bouncing up and making Kyoutani catch him in his arms as Yahaba wrapped himself around him.

“Take me to bed,” he whispered as Kyoutani smeared a kiss against the side of his open mouth.

“Wait a sec—” Kyoutani made to push him down, but Yahaba clenched his legs around his waist. “ _Brat_ ,” he snapped. “Get down I need to get something out of my pants.”

Yahaba wiggled, arching, pushing his ass into his hands. “You're already out of your pants.”

Kyoutani did roll his eyes now, and resigned himself to simply wrapping an arm around Yahaba’s waist and bending awkwardly to reach down and hook his fingers in his pants from the floor. He dumped them on the counter while Yahaba nibbled little love bites into his neck.

“You had those in your pants the whole time?” Yahaba asked, seeing that he'd brought a tiny bottle of lube and his wildly colored condoms.

“Yeah, I don't have a purse,” he said sarcastically, hiking Yahaba up more comfortably in his arms and stomping to the bedroom. Only then did Yahaba slide from his arms and onto the bed.

“You brought a lot.” He noted with a smile, kneeling on the bed and sliding his hands up Kyoutani’s chest.

“I hope to use at least a few,” Kyoutani said, leaning to kiss him. Yahaba slipped his arms around his neck, pulling him down until he toppled onto the bed with a grumble.

Yahaba slithered close and Kyoutani ran his palms up his sides, leaving a warm, slow burning heat along his skin. He shuddered when Kyoutani slipped his arms around, one hand pressing hard against his back as it moved down _down_ and cupped his ass. His body twisted, arching, his ribs opening up — ready to accept anything Kyoutani would give him.

He pulled Kyoutani on top of him, hooking a leg around his thigh to keep his body as close as possible, Kyoutani’s panting breath against his throat, their skin sticky where they touched—all over. He found purchase on the mattress with his heel and _shoved_ his hips upward, so that Kyoutani growled and pressed back, and lay his body down to cover Yahaba’s. They took a long, still moment to lay against each other, Yahaba curling his fingers around the back of Kyoutani’s neck and pulling his forehead down to lean against his own.

They watched each other breathe… Kyoutani’s eyes dark and focused, flicking to Yahaba’s parted lips, his tongue darting out to touch his own. And Yahaba smiled, tilting his chin up, reaching out with his tongue to lick across his lips.

The response was primal: Kyoutani ducking his head to kiss him, open mouthed and messy, more _desire_ than anything else. It was a kiss. It _was_ a _kiss._ It was _more_ than just a kiss. Yahaba’s hands explored across each muscle of Kyoutani’s back, savoring each one individually, and one of Kyoutani’s hands came up to cup the back of Yahaba’s head, cradling him gently as a delicate egg.

All of a sudden Kyoutani turned his face away, sucking down large breaths, his muscles trembling, his eyes clenched closed as he dropped his head to Yahaba’s shoulder. Yahaba was shivering, somehow a little cold but also too hot all over, his heart beating fast as a rabbit’s—he was sure Kyoutani could hear it, could feel it. He allowed the tips of his fingers to trail over his back, soothing, and pressed his cheek into the side of Kyoutani’s head. He didn't know why Kyoutani seemed to be slipping, his _bad-boy_ facade crumbling, but he was willing to hold him, gather up the pieces, and reveal the true person underneath.

When Kyoutani’s breath wasn’t quite so gasping, Yahaba brushed his lips over the curve of his ear and said in a low, husky whisper, “Are you ready?”

He huffed out a little growl with his next breath, sinking his teeth into Yahaba’s shoulder, not hard enough to make a bruise, but right on an old one — pain tingled through Yahaba’s body, straight down his spine and to his cock, making him buck up off the mattress.

“Turn over for me?” Kyoutani’s voice was rough, strained, as if he wasn’t used to asking.

Yahaba nodded, and they parted just enough for Yahaba to sit up and turn over, crawling up to the middle of the bed so he could really stretch himself out on his belly. Kyoutani leaned over him, careful to not touch him except with his lips, kissing each vertebrae of his spine as he moved down, then pressing a gentle kiss to the bruise on his ass from the night before.

… and then he moved to the other cheek and Yahaba sat up on his elbows, twisting hard to look under his elbow at Kyoutani. “Don’t you dare!”

Kyoutani looked up at him, a slow, devious smile spreading on his face. Without breaking eye contact, he touched a kiss to his skin and Yahaba narrowed his eyes.

“Kentarou…” Yahaba warned.

He laid his teeth into flesh, not hard, barely even a touch.

Something sizzled high and hot in Yahaba’s belly. “Don’t.”

Kyoutani grabbed his hips, and bit down.

“O- _w_ -uh!” Yahaba yelped, trying to twist away and failing, then dropping his face to the bed and letting out a little—annoyed more than angry—scream. “ _Argh!_ I hate you!”

Kyoutani pulled away, still holding him down, and smiled at his work. “So pretty, though.”

Yahaba only mumbled in response, and Kyoutani chuckled, slipping his fingers over his hips and pulling him up. He picked up the little bottle—Yahaba still thought it was so funny that he had brought it—as if Yahaba _didn’t_ have some of his own— and dribbled some of it on his fingers.

Then his hand was touching him, just touching, stroking, circling, not pressing in. Just _touching_.

It drove Yahaba wild. He whined, tilting his hips, silently begging, but Kyoutani gripped his hip with his free hand to hold him still. Yahaba rubbed his face into his sheets, gripping until his hands shook, as Kyoutani leaned his body against the back of his thighs, his thumb still just circling around his rim.

When Kyoutani spoke, his voice had deepened significantly, coming out sounding just as tense and wrecked as Yahaba felt. “Wonder how loose you are from yesterday?”

Yahaba whined through his nose. “Find out, would you?”

So he did, hooking his thumb down and _in_ and Yahaba was still so _tender_ from last night that his whole body tensed and jerked, his stomach clenching and he couldn’t help the animalistic whimper that came out of him. The thing was, it hardly took any pressure at all — nor did it when Kyoutani removed his thumb and twisted his hand around so he could press his entire middle finger inside in a slow, torturous slide.

Yahaba swallowed the moan in his throat, then gasped as Kyoutani twisted and pulled out, and back in. He rocked, panting, closing his eyes as his belly warmed and writhed.

It didn't take a lot of stretching for a second finger to push in beside the first, and _oh it was so soft_ the sound that Kyoutani made. He whispered something that Yahaba didn't hear but sounded an awful lot like _beautiful._

And as Kyoutani widened his fingers, the hurt wasn't exactly _pain_. It was very close to pleasure, if he thought about it. It was the type of hurt that demanded to be felt all over, and Yahaba’s toes curled with it. Kyoutani’s fingers pressed and pulled, curling and searching, taking him apart from the inside.

He shuddered. He shivered. He gasped. He moaned.

And finally he reached a hand back to grip Kyoutani’s wrist. “Stop,” he gasped. But he didn't let him remove his fingers just yet, and Kyoutani scissored them—Yahaba choked on a wordless gasp.

Kyoutani pulled his hand off, and removed his fingers, and leaned away for a moment to open and roll on a (neon yellow) condom.

“Wait,” Yahaba said after he caught his breath and managed to wobble up so he was kneeling.

Kyoutani quirked an eyebrow, leisurely stroking himself. “Problem?”

“Lay down,” Yahaba told him. “Let me ride you.”

Kyoutani made a little surprised noise, and flushed a pretty pink across his nose when he realized he made it aloud.

Yahaba smiled, and guided him down to the sheets before he swung a leg over his hips— and squeezed with his knees. His heart was racing, all his nerves alight and tender as Kyoutani spread himself out on his— _his_ —mattress, and Yahaba almost wished he’d foregone the bath so that his scent would better embed itself in the fibers.

 _Next time_.

He wiggled a little, somehow proud of how he'd managed to get here. Kyoutani watched him with a puzzled expression, albeit an appreciative one, his hands resting firmly on Yahaba’s hips, but not demanding he move.

Yahaba leaned forward, scooting backwards, so the thick curve of Kyoutani’s cock rested against his ass. “You don't have people bossing you around much, do you?”

Kyoutani’s mouth twisted, and his fingers tightened ever so slightly. “Not usually, no.”

Yahaba grinned, reaching back with one hand to grip him. “Well, tonight, get used to it. Don't move, let me…” he said, but then trailing off, and angled his hips just right.

They both groaned when he went in, Yahaba a little louder. It was always Yahaba’s favorite part, the first slide inside him. No matter how much he prepared and stretched himself, it was always different from fingers, or toys. It was a living, breathing human being, filling him up. Kyoutani especially fit that role well, the initial stretch was _a lot._ He bowed his head to Kyoutani’s chest, gasping a little at the sensation — painful, but not so much that he ever thought to stop.

“Ah, shit,” he moaned, rocking slowly, not all the way down, just working over the tip.

Kyoutani’s fingers spread on his hips, but he obediently stayed still, even though it looked like it took every iota of his concentration. After Yahaba spent several minutes just working the tip in and out of him, he finally opened his eyes, glancing over at Kyoutani. His eyes had fluttered closed and Yahaba wanted to kiss the soft curve where his dark lashes touched his cheek, or the little dip between his eyebrows, the pout of his mouth.

Kyoutani’s hand moved up to lay his palm flat on Yahaba’s back. “Come on,” he said, opening his eyes to stare at him — he had to pause while Yahaba kissed him, deep and slow, biting at his lip and sucking his tongue — then said, “I know you can take all of me.”

Yahaba took it as a challenge and sat up, spreading his palms on Kyoutani’s chest. He sucked down a big breath and as he exhaled, he spread his thighs, lowering his body until they were flushed together. He _shuddered_ through his next breath, sitting tall, his head thrown back, mouth open in pleasure. Kyoutani’s hands stroked up and down his sides, tickling his ribs, twitching inside him.

“There’s a good boy,” Kyoutani said, pushing up just enough to make Yahaba’s breath punch out of his throat.

Yahaba shot him a look. “Don’t be condescending.” He leaned further back, tucking his arms behind him so he could support his weight on Kyoutani’s thighs. It made his back arch deliciously and Kyoutani ran his hand over the tight skin of Yahaba’s belly.

Then he _pressed_ and Yahaba arched even further, letting out a sharp cry. He took several, long, slow breaths, gasping out after each. Kyoutani was so deep inside him, he could practically feel him in his _throat._ He felt overly hot and tingly, all his nerves screaming to life and dying again in quick succession, begging to be noticed by his brain — but his brain unable to think anything but _I need_ _more._

He shifted his hips, not a thrust, not a roll, just a twitch of his body, rocking ever so gently, using Kyoutani’s thighs and the flexibility of his own spine for leverage.

It was so much more than _nice_. He was so full, stretched open and tender, all his bones warmed and his muscles melting. Kyoutani’s hands sliding over his skin, pressing and touching and leaving live-wires in their wake. Yahaba sighed out a _jesus_ before he grunted and leaned forward, unbending his spine so he could curl over Kyoutani, who lay prone under him, transported. His eyes were half lidded and fuzzy, his mouth bitten strawberry pink, head tossed back and half open as he clenched his middle, just enough to shift himself inside Yahaba, but he himself seemed too lost in his own pleasure to do much else.

Yahaba spread his thighs even wider, proud of how flexible and strong he was—most others would be shaking by now, but not him—not now. Tonight he would make Kyoutani _his_. Make him forget the person that had hurt him. He would show him what it meant to have someone want to make you feel good and not ask for anything in return.

He fumbled at his hips for Kyoutani’s hands, twining their fingers together and pulling his hands up to press them to the mattress near his head. He shifted his knees, getting more leverage so he could really roll his hips fully now, taking Kyoutani all the way down before sliding _almost_ all the way off. _The length_ — his eyes fluttered closed with it, squeezing his fingers around Kyoutani’s and smiling a little when Kyoutani squeezed back.

“Hey,” Yahaba said, breathless. “Kiss me.”

Kyoutani’s eyes flicked open, over to him, and he couldn’t move except to lift his head, surging upwards as Yahaba opened his mouth. Their tongues traced each other, chasing, playful, teeth clicking when one of them became too eager and moved too fast. Yahaba thrust his hips back with every swipe of his tongue, stretching his spine, arching so his cock smeared between their bellies. The friction wasn’t enough to really get him off, not nearly, not yet.

Kyoutani tugged at his hands, but Yahaba squeezed tighter to hold him still. He pulled harder, then snarled against Yahaba’s mouth and yanked their hands all the way up over his head. Yahaba yelped in surprise. They bonked their heads together and he tried to lean his face away to see him better.

“What the—?”

“Wanna fuck you.” Kyoutani pulled their hands up until Yahaba was stretched over him.

He felt Kyoutani shift his legs, getting his feet under him, and before Yahaba could say, “Wait—” Kyoutani gripped his hands, holding him while his hips raised, fucking up into Yahaba with sharp, fierce thrusts of his hips. Yahaba cried out. _It hurt_ — the rush of lightning and fire that shot up his spine suddenly making him wanting to come now, _right now_.

He couldn’t move away, was trapped with his body stretched too tight, like a bowstring ready to snap, tensing with every quick thrust. “Ah, fuck,” he yelped during a particularly well placed thrust, and Kyoutani shifted so he could try to angle exactly the same way again. Yahaba cried out, loud, right in his ear, and it only drove Kyoutani to fuck him harder.

Yahaba moaned long and low, the crest of pleasure inside him building, building, _building_ , curling up his belly and filling everything inside him until his brain thought he was ascending to some place where the only sensation was some quivering, pulsating, primal form of love. He wanted to float in that space, bask in the sensation for as long as he could, his mind going fuzzy and soft.

Kyoutani tugged at his hands and this time Yahaba let him go, opting instead to hold onto Kyoutani’s head, digging both hands into his hair and _holding on_. One of Kyoutani’s hands came to rest on the back of his head, and his other arm looped around Yahaba’s waist, pulling him down so his hips were at a different angle —

— and suddenly he was close to the edge, too close, read to fall off the wave and drown. He didn’t want this to end, though, he wanted to ride the high for longer. _Wait,_ he thought, _no, stop, slow down, come back, let me linger._

Kyoutani’s hands relaxed and he stopped moving all together, turning his head to look at him, brows drawn down in worry.

Yahaba gasped, “What — why’d you stop!?”

Kyoutani blinked at him, stunned. “You said wait?”

“I wasn’t talking to _you!_ ” Yahaba snapped, and put his hands on Kyoutani’s chest to shove himself up. Their skin was sticky with sweat, and Yahaba spread his fingers wide, leaning up and rolling his body, sighing as he was able to mold his own orgasm as it blossomed in his belly like a long-petaled flower, caressing every place inside him.

Kyoutani was making little noises, saying something under his breath, his eyes dark and focused. His hands skittered up Yahaba’s arms, until his fingers found Yahaba’s face and cupped around his jaw. He turned his face down so Yahaba would look at him, and held him while their bodies melted together. Yahaba curled his hands over Kyoutani’s wrists, holding him, and kissing his thumb when he traced his lips.

“Damn,” Kyoutani whispered, his body tense. “You — ah, _Shigeru_ —” he gasped suddenly, his eyes clenching shut and thrusting hard as his orgasm came, sudden, like it startled him.

Yahaba shivered as he felt him twitching inside him, and enjoyed watching his face twist and his mouth fall open. He rolled his hips, fucking him through it, milking him for all he could, even as Kyoutani’s fingers on his jaw began to hurt.

“Good?” he asked, breathless, when Kyoutani’s body finally relaxed and he peeled his fingers away.

Kyoutani could only nod, stroking his hands down over Yahaba’s chest, passing his thumbs over his nipples, looking fascinated and a little stunned.

“Can I…?” Yahaba trailed off, still rocking his hips. “I’m so close…”

A more fervent nod, even as his face tightened, probably in pain from the oversensitivity that comes post-orgasm.

“Give me—” But he couldn’t finish, his tongue too thick and heavy. Yahaba grabbed at Kyoutani’s hand, and wrapped their fingers around his cock, stroking slowly. Kyoutani’s thick, nimble fingers twisted and pulled, his nail pressing gentle but firm into the tip, then his knuckle dragging along the underside of him.

“Fuck,” Kyoutani muttered, sounding a little shattered. “I don’t know if —”

“Please,” Yahaba moaned, _so close_ , but Kyoutani groaned under him, growing soft, looking hurt. Yahaba closed his eyes, begging him silently to hold on, just a _minute_ more...

And suddenly Kyoutani grabbed Yahaba by the waist and yanked him off, tossing him to the side. “Get off,” he gasped, rolling away.

Yahaba keened low in his throat, whining out, “That _hurt,”_ before curling up, stroking himself.

He heard the snap of latex as Kyoutani pulled his condom off, then he was back and his strong hands gripped Yahaba’s knees and wrenched his legs apart. “Move your hands,” he said, hurriedly, as he lowered his head and wrapped his lips around him. Yahaba’s entire body jerked at the sensation, so warm, and sudden, and _damn_ Kyoutani was strong enough to hold his thighs apart when Yahaba’s body tried to close around his head like a vice grip. He swallowed Yahaba all the way down, and _holy shit_ , Yahaba thought _,_ he’d been wrong when he thought that he only used his mouth to bite and make crude remarks.

Kyoutani moved his hands, wrapping one around Yahaba’s thigh and squeezing, his other hand unceremoniously sliding down to shove three fingers all the way inside him, making him shout and arch up off the bed. Both his legs wrapped around Kyoutani’s shoulders, holding him, the muscles in his belly clenching with every breath. His hands reached down and tangled in Kyoutani’s hair, just holding him and not trying to dictate his movements because clearly he knew what he was doing.

He knew how to drive Yahaba mad with his tongue, pressing hard with the tip of it then licking in long, broad strokes. His fingers stretched and prodded, twisting to find the perfect angle. He knew what he was looking for, and found it, massaging until Yahaba was falling apart. He was babbling, trying to tell Kyoutani how much he appreciated this, but what mostly came out was _ohgodohgodohgodpleasedon’tstop_ in one continuous moan.

“Ah, Ken—baby—please, I’m—” He couldn’t finish a single thought in his head. The wave hit him, throwing him over the edge, his body quaking as he spilled into Kyoutani’s mouth.

Kyoutani stroked his thigh, then pulled away, sitting up and touching the back of his hand to his mouth as he glanced around, making a face, then slid off the bed and padded to the bathroom, taking the used condom with him to dispose of it.

Yahaba lay panting, his body shivering every now and then, listening to Kyoutani run the tap, rinsing his mouth and hands, probably. “Hey,” he called, blushing and slapping his hands over his face when he heard just how fucked-out and raw his voice sounded. So he tried again: “Hey, there’s bottled water and stuff in the fridge if you want it.”

Kyoutani came out of the bathroom, still naked, wiping his hands on a towel. He cocked his head at Yahaba spread out on the bed, still stroking his own belly, and Yahaba caught the little smile that touched his lips before he left the room.

The view of his perfectly round, well-toned ass made Yahaba want to continue his drawing. Or start a new one. Or paint him. Or go buy some clay mold him from nothing. He just wanted to touch him. He’d probably never get over this man, and how close he felt to him, even though they barely knew each other. Kyoutani seemed the type of person that was very careful about who he let see him vulnerable… but Yahaba thought he’d seen glimpses of who he was. And he liked that person a _lot_.

The sex helped. But it wasn’t everything.

But it helped.

He sat up, suddenly cold without a body pressed up against him. He went to the bathroom to run a warm cloth over his skin, then pulled on some clean underwear, and wandered out into the living room with some lounge pants for Kyoutani to put on.

He found him chugging what looked like his second bottle of water in the kitchen. And when Yahaba laughed at the site he turned, panting a little.

“What?”

“Just you,” Yahaba said, (his voice sounding scratchy to his ears, still) smiling. He held out the pants. “They might not fit perfectly, and honestly I’d prefer if if you just sat around naked, but it’s only fair that I offer.”

Kyoutani shrugged. “I can be naked if you want. It’s your couch.”

Yahaba laughed. “It could only be improved.” He reached into his fridge and got his favorite brand of bottled green tea, taking several large gulps of it.

But Kyoutani did put on the pants, much to his disappointment.

They went back to the living room, but instead of sitting on the couch Kyoutani moved to his art desk and peered at the plethora of things on the desk. “I thought you told me your place was full of junk? You seem like such a neat person,” he noted, “except when it comes to this.”

Yahaba stepped close, picking up one of the sketchbooks and a pencil then sitting on the arm of the couch. “You can’t contain genius.”

Kyoutani snorted, but smiled. “I would never have pegged you for an artist.”

“Are you not _exhausted_?” Yahaba asked as he opened the book to a clean page, his thumb knowing just how much pressure to put into flipping the pages. “I just want to take a nap.” But he set the sketchbook on his knee and began sketching, hurriedly, still feeling a rush.

Kyoutani glanced over at him, eyebrows raised, clearly fascinated. His fingers traced over some of the spare pieces of charcoal littered across the table. “And yet you’re drawing.”

“And yet,” Yahaba agreed.

“What are you drawing?” Kyoutani asked, leaning over, but Yahaba tucked his sketchbook up higher, pulling his legs up to hide it as he continued to put lines to paper.

“You’ll see,” he said, grinning, glancing up, amused at the pout on Kyoutani’s face.

He went back to perusing the items in the desk, seeming right at home as he opened and closed various drawers and boxes to see what was inside them. He picked up a short piece of charcoal and rubbed it over his thumb, looking fascinated at the way it streaked his skin dark. He set it down, then didn’t seem to know what to do with his dirty fingers, and looked stumped.

“Did you never take an art class or anything?” Yahaba asked, darkening the lines he liked, and sketching out more forms from it. Arm here, leg, the shape of a second body.

“No.” Kyoutani picked up a tube of paint, and twisted the cap off. He stuck his finger in the red paint and pulled it away, then seemed to have the same confused and slightly concerned thought that he had no idea what to do with it. “I was in other clubs.”

This time Yahaba laughed at him, not meanly, and pointed to one of the cloths on the table. “Use that. What clubs did you like the most?”

Kyoutani took a moment to carefully wipe his hands, and seemed fascinated by how dirty the rest of the rag was — the casualties of artistic war. “I used to play rugby.”

“Oh?” Yahaba grinned, glancing up to confirm that, yes, Kyoutani had the muscles for rugby. It was a full body game, and Kyoutani _had_ the body for it. “When?”

“Up until my second year in high school.” Kyoutani was poking through his brushes now, touching the soft bristles.

Yahaba scribbled out the texture of fur, and the folds of clothes. “Why’d you quit? Not like it anymore?”

He didn’t get an answer, and when he looked up again he saw Kyoutani had pulled one of the biggest brushes from the cup and was thumbing the bristles.

“Ken?”

Kyoutani looked up, blinked. “Oh. The — yeah. No, I liked it.”

That was all he got, but Yahaba wanted to know more. “Could you hand me — on the… one, two, three — fourth drawer there? Yeah, that one. There’s an eraser, could you hand that to me?” When he did, Yahaba said, “So why’d you quit, then?”

Kyoutani carefully replaced the brush in the cup and poked through that drawer too. “I had to get a job after school to help my mom with expenses. Between me and my sister it was expensive.”

“Oh, that sucks,” Yahaba said, only a little distracted as he began working on the expressions. He made a mental note to ask about his sister at a later time. “What about your dad?”

“Died,” Kyoutani said bluntly. He flicked the drawer closed and picked up one of the dip pens, poking at the sharp point of the tines.

“Oh…”

Kyoutani shrugged, replacing the pen and running his finger over one of the edge of one of the canvases against the wall. “It was a long time ago.”

Yahaba looked up now, a little worried about how effortlessly he dropped that bombshell. So casually, as if it didn’t hurt him when clearly it was still an open wound. He thought that he wasn’t really that old, and that _a long time ago_ meant either he’d either been a child or a teenager and either way that’s too young to lose a parent. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. The little that he knew about the sharply fanged creature in front of him told him that he was a strong person. He could tell it in the way he carried himself, the set of his shoulders and the tilt to his chin, the way his eyes swept across the world. But Yahaba also knew that behind the fangs, behind the bravado, he was gentle, and careful, and affectionate. Yahaba _knew_ that he didn’t need protection from the world, that he’d seen the rough edges of it and lived… but he wanted to protect him anyway.

Kyoutani shrugged, the gesture trying to be casual and failing. “It’s fine. Can I…?” He ran his fingers over one of the sketchbooks that had dirty and uneven edges, clearly one that Yahaba had filled with drawings.

It was a dismissal of the topic of his family. So Yahaba said, “Yes, of course.”

He picked it up and sat on the chair, opening the first page. He squinted at the drawing there like he didn’t understand it. “This isn’t done.”

Yahaba took a moment to finish erasing a few gratuitous lines. “It’s a motion study. It’s not supposed to be a full piece.”

Kyoutani hummed, and flipped the page. They were quiet while each was absorbed, Kyoutani in studying the drawings and Yahaba in making a new one. At one, Kyoutani said, “What the hell.”

Yahaba looked up, “Show me?” He turned the notebook and revealed one of the drawings Yahaba hated the most. He sighed in frustration. “I hate that one. It sucks. I was trying to draw this —ugh. So,” he went back to his drawing as he spoke, “Last year when I was a part of Swan Lake I’d come early and stay late so I could watch the principals rehearse. For most of the show they worked apart from the chorus, until everyone knew the steps. It was like… I don’t know, two months? Something. But, like I said, I would show up for their rehearsals too, and sit in the corner or, later, in the audience seats or the side of the stage and practice trying to catch their movements on paper. That one,” he huffed in remembered aggravation, “I don’t know why, I just couldn’t get it. The guy was doing these big barrel jumps around the stage and I had a hard time figuring out how to capture the forward motion of them.”

Kyoutani looked back at the drawing —a series of half-hearted, desperate sketchily drawn lines of a man leaping, arms and legs out almost parallel to the floor. “It looks weird.”

Yahaba snorted. “I know, that’s why I hate it. He looks _still_ and boring and…” He stopped, rubbing his eyebrow with the end of his pencil. “Just ignore that one.” He bowed his head, working on the shape of the expression.

Kyoutani flipped to the next page, then the next, and continued to turn pages and look at each and every drawing. They were all the same. Dancers in motion. Some of them were Akaashi or Suga, who he’d watched practicing before their classes. Akaashi had a way of movement about him that Yahaba wanted so desperately to capture on paper, and Suga himself was a portrait in motion. He knew there was a few sketches of Oikawa at the piano or playing his violin in there somewhere that he liked.

When he finished flipping through that book Kyoutani picked up a different one, and flipped through it too in silence, occasionally making pleased noises. Finally, Yahaba blew away the eraser shavings of his drawing and held it at arm’s length to look it over. It wasn’t perfect, it was just a little thing, but he thought it was cute.

“Ken,” he said, grinning, and flipped his notebook around to show him.

Kyoutani looked up, and his mouth made the shape of a laugh without the sound. “Oh my god.”

Yahaba grinned. “Do you like it?”

“My face does not look like that.”

Yahaba turned the notebook to look at it again, pleased. It was a silly sketch of what he thought Kyoutani looked like at the animal shelter. He had drawn him laying down, holding a long eared, floppy looking puppy that was licking his face, which was scrunched up in a joyous, child-like laugh. “I’m sure it does,” Yahaba said. “Next time you go, I’ll go too, and we can see who’s right.”

Kyoutani reached for the notebook and Yahaba handed it over so he could look more closely at the drawing. He turned it this way and that, frowning at it, then a smile slowly spread on his face. “You were serious?”

“About?” Yahaba asked, sliding off the arm and coming over to lean on Kyoutani’s shoulders.

“Going with me.” He turned his face up to look at him, his eyes indicating he didn’t believe him.

“Of course I meant it,” Yahaba said, laughing. He kissed Kyoutani’s head and took the notebook from his hands. “When’s your next day off?” He dropped himself back onto the couch, twiddling his pencil over his fingers.

Kyoutani took a moment to think. “Thursday, I think.”

Almost a week. “I’ve got a class that morning, but I’m done by eleven, so maybe we could go to the shelter and then get some dinner?”

Kyoutani raised his eyebrows, blinking at him. “Really?”

“Yeah.” But Yahaba paused, book on his lap, suddenly worried. “Unless… I dunno, you don’t want to spent time together.”

“... No, I…” His expression was complicated, and one that Yahaba couldn’t quite figure out. Nervous flutters wormed their way into his belly at the face, because he couldn’t tell if Kyoutani _liked_ the idea of spending time with him.

“I’d like that,” he finally said, sounding like he meant it. He stood, moving to the canvases leaned against the wall. Yahaba had allowed him to look at everything else, so he didn’t feel like he needed to ask anymore, it seemed.

Yahaba grinned to himself at the thought that they could spend time together out-and-about. “So for your painting, what do you think you’d like?”

“What do you mean?” Kyoutani asked, looking at the first canvas, which was something he planned to sell to one of the shops he had a semi-partnership with. It was a painting of the local market, taken from a photograph that had been provided. It was busy, and hectic, and Yahaba had had a hard time working all the little details in: the fruits and vegetable at one stand, the multi-colored books and magazines at another, the playful toys from another. And the _people_ he’d had to paint. So many. Everyone doing their own thing, focused on this or that, their clothing and their gestures all painstakingly detailed with the smallest brush he owned.

“Like do you want something like that or something abstract? Do you want something colorful or — ”

“I want whatever you’re willing to give me.” He flipped to the second canvas, which was an abstract study in the color _red_. All shades and shapes, slashing and boiling, it always made Yahaba a little tense when he looked at it so he never liked it to be up top.

Yahaba nodded, sighing a little, wondering what he should do. He remembered the dark walls of Kyoutani’s apartment, the pale sheets on his bed, and thought that, yes, something bright and colorful would look good there.

Then Kyoutani flipped to the third canvas, the second to last, and _suddenly_ Yahaba remembered what the last one was. All in a rush, he leapt up, throwing his sketchbook aside and flinging himself across the room. “Wait!”

He shoved his body between Kyoutani and the paintings, crowding him away, pushing him back. Kyoutani stared wide eyed at him, stunned, and did take a few steps backwards. “What?”

“N-Nothing!” Yahaba said, panicked. It wasn’t that he was _ashamed_ of the drawing… he just didn’t want the subject of it to see it. It could get awkward. “Just —it’s —it’s not done.”

Kyoutani cocked his head at Yahaba’s agitation. “Okay… fine. Don’t have to be so jumpy.” He held up his hands, grinning.

Yahaba was nervous and tense, wanting to change the topic and get Kyoutani away from the canvas. He put his hands on Kyoutani’s chest and moved him towards the couch. “Want to watch a movie? What do you like?”

Kyoutani chuckled and waved him off. He picked up their old food containers and took them to the kitchen, coming back with more water and Yahaba’s green tea bottle. “It’s your apartment, we’ll watch whatever you want to.”

They sat side by side on the couch, Yahaba tucking his legs up and leaning against Kyoutani’s shoulder as he doodled on a clean page. There was a movie on, but neither of them really paid attention to it, since Kyoutani dozed off leaning against the arm and Yahaba took the opportunity to sketch his sleeping face, which, when not being used as a weapon against anyone who tried to get close to him, was smooth, high cheekbones and delicate, dark eyelashes brushing his cheeks, his lips parted as he breathed long, slow, sleepy breaths.

Yahaba leaned against him when his eyes got too heavy to keep open, and he had the thought that his neck was probably going to hurt after this nap… but Kyoutani’s body was so warm, it didn’t matter.


	7. Chapter 7

It was late Thursday morning and sun beat down while Yahaba waited outside The Pawsitive Attitude animal shelter. He checked his phone, thumbing between the screens, nervously waiting for Kyoutani to show up. He shifted his school bag over his shoulder and leaned against the building, looking around, and sighed.

Even though he was early, he felt that Kyoutani was late, and bubbles of fear rolled through his belly. He went back to his phone, debating on texting Kyoutani and asking if he was still coming. They’d been texting off an on since their last night together, when Kyoutani had woken in a state of nervous frustration having slept on the couch all night long. After he left, Yahaba had had to take a long, too hot bath with the jets on high to loosen his muscles before falling back into bed and sleeping till well into the afternoon, his body exhausted and his mind not too far behind.

Yahaba usually texted first, asking how Kyoutani was doing or telling him something funny that had happened or sending him a picture of something that inspired him for a painting. And even though he never was the initiator, Kyoutani was a wonderful _participant_ , always responding with enthusiasm and sometimes long-winded, bunched together paragraphs of text. It seemed out of character, Yahaba thought, until he realized that Kyoutani still never spoke about himself, opting instead to detail basics about his day and his thoughts on whatever Yahaba had said. Their text page was long, and it took a while to scroll all the way to the top, but Yahaba liked reading through the old ones, trying to eke out every detail of Kyoutani’s personality from the green bubbles.

He was typing out a message when suddenly his neck prickled, as if he was being watched, and he looked up to see Kyoutani walking down the sidewalk towards him. His face was complicated, brow furrowed but a smile pulling at the corners of his lips. “You’re here.”

Yahaba smiled at him. “I told you I would be.” He pocketed his phone and reached out a hand, which Kyoutani looked confused at before he took his hand and allowed Yahaba to kiss it in greeting. “Good to see you. Been working hard?”

“Yes,” Kyoutani said simply. “I’m surprised you came.”

Yahaba laughed softly. “Don’t be. I stick to my word when I give it.”

His mouth did something funny, making Yahaba think that others had broken their promises to him on more than one occasion. “Well… ready, then?”

“I am if you are.”

They went inside, where Kyoutani had a short conversation with the girl at the counter, and they filled their names out on a form that Yahaba didn’t bother reading. “I might have lied a little to you,” Kyoutani said as the girl left them alone for a moment to take their paperwork back.

Yahaba cocked an eyebrow. “Oh?” But for whatever reason, he wasn’t mad.

“Not all of it is just playing with them. Sometimes I have to clean or take them for walks and stuff.” Kyoutani looked both proud and ashamed of this, like it wasn’t the most selfless thing to volunteer love and time when he had absolutely no reason to other than that he _wanted_ to.

“Alright,” Yahaba said agreeably. “That's fun, too.”

“It's not.”

“Well, I’ll enjoy it anyway.”

Kyoutani looked like he didn't believe him.

The girl came back, and told them that, indeed, they would be taking some of the adult dogs on a walk around the city block. They were handed bundles of colorful leashes and spent ten minutes gathering so many dogs Yahaba was overwhelmed for a moment as they backed out of the door. There were big dogs and little dogs, all bustling along around them, shoulders bumping and heads tossed in excitement. Tongues lolled and ears flopped, the _click-clack_ of their nails on the sidewalks a little song accompanying them.

They each had two to five leashes in their hands, and Yahaba stumbled along, thinking that of course _he_ got the overly-excited, leaping dogs that nearly jerked his arm out of socket. He said as much to Kyoutani, who reached over and wrapped his fist around the leashes just under Yahaba’s hand and pulled them from him.

“They can tell you’re nervous,” he said, pulling the dogs over to him so that Yahaba only had two of the calmer dogs. The hyper ones took almost a block to calm down, but then they were trotting along happily beside the others, calm as you please.

Yahaba grinned at his control over the animals, at his assertive calmness that fell over all of them. “You’re like the Dog Whisperer.”

He snorted in derision. “Don’t go there.”

Yahaba shrugged, holding one of the leashes tighter as a small brown and white speckled bull-dog looked like it wanted to make a run for it. He felt a drop of sweat make its way down his hair and into his shirt. He’d left his jacket and school bag at the shelter in a little employee room, but the weight of the sun was just as heavy. The smell of summer rolled through the city, the baking of the black street, the heat of the sky bearing down, fresh grass pushing up through the cracks in the sidewalk.

“Your classes?” Kyoutani asked suddenly, glancing over at him.

“Oh, boring,” Yahaba said. “I can’t even explain just how boring.”

Kyoutani chuckled as they stopped at a street corner to wait for the WALK light. “Numbers are boring.”

Yahaba hummed in thought, a little _hm_ ’ing sound that barely made it over the roar of cars passing by. “They’re not boring, they’re just their own language. You have to learn to speak it.”

“I’m bad with both of them, then. Numbers and languages.”

“I could teach—”

“No,” Kyoutani said firmly. “I’m good, thanks.”

Yahaba laughed, and they stepped into the street, their nebula of dogs a flurry of activity around them.

Later, after the walk, after cleaning some of the crates, after Kyoutani (who was a full-time employee in all but name and pay-stub) showed several dogs to a potential family, after Yahaba helped file mountains of paperwork, they walked down the street to a ramen shop and while they ate Yahaba gushed about all the animals.

This was something Kyoutani knew about and was comfortable with, so the conversation flowed quickly and easily, Kyoutani providing or correcting the names of the dogs that Yahaba talked about. The conversation lasted nearly all of the meal, they talked about each of the dogs, Kyoutani reminiscing sadly about how each had been brought to the shelter and joyously recounting how others that Yahaba had never met had found their forever homes.

At one point Yahaba asked, “How do you not take them all home? I really liked that little old guy, the one with all the—” he motioned to his face, indicating the dog’s scruffy, scraggly facial hair, like a wrung out mop.

Kyoutani shrugged one shoulder a little sadly. “You just can’t think like that. It’s impossible to keep them all. No matter how much you want to help them all. I almost, _almost_ , took one home when I first started going, this sad little puppy that had been hit by a car and abandoned. His leg was broken and he had heart issues and no one wanted him… but…” He stirred the few remaining noodles in his ramen, looking sad and pensive.

Yahaba watched him, but thought that this was a pause that Kyoutani needed to compose his thoughts, and so didn’t interrupt it.

Finally he finished in a strained voice, “But… he died. Overnight he got sick, the medicine or something…” He mouth worked, like the words were forming but he was unable to get them out. It was several long moments before he managed to speak and when he did, even though that was illogical, he sounded like he blamed himself, “He was alone…”

Yahaba blinked, leaning back, all the air going out of him in a rush. “Oh…” His heart hurt for this long gone, poor tiny soul. “I…” He didn’t know what to say to comfort him.

Kyoutani nodded, setting his chopsticks down and leaning back too. He turned and pressed his cheek to his shoulder to hide his face for a long moment. When he turned back, he seemed fine, even though Yahaba knew he was hurting. “It was just a thing… but, as I said, you can’t help them all. But you do what you can.”

“And you never thought of adopting one later?”

Kyoutani shook his head. “When would I have time? I work two jobs, and volunteer there. It would be like going from one cage to another for them. I wouldn’t want that. They deserve better than that.”

“Well,” Yahaba said, grinning, “we should to back. I had a lot of fun.”

“Really? All we did was clean.”

“So? I still had fun doing it with _you_.”

He’d flushed red as a cherry and changed the subject after that, asking relentless questions about Yahaba’s dancing and painting until they were done eating. Yahaba paid for their meal and they left, walking without really knowing where they were going. They hadn’t discussed what they were doing after, so they walked aimlessly, Yahaba pointing out how the setting sun reflected off the windows and how he had the hardest time capturing that exact shade of yellow/orange/red no matter how hard he tried. He had a mental list of specific colors that had escaped his wide-cast net and he was constantly trying to hunt them down.

Yahaba led them down near the public parks by the city’s big lake, and they passed several families packing up from a day grilling and camping and playing in the water. Yahaba had remembered why his subconscious had guided him to come to the park, and slowly wandered towards one of the empty grill pits. His bag felt overly heavy all of a sudden, because he wasn’t sure how Kyoutani would react to what he had in mind. He stopped beside the grill and poked a stick inside the slats to make space.

“What’re you doing?”

Yahaba was quiet a moment, glancing nervously at him, then opened his bag and pulled out the blue scarf smattered with sunflowers.

Kyoutani’s eyes narrowed and he sucked in such a tiny breath Yahaba didn’t think he meant to do it. “Why do you have that?” he asked it like an accusation. Like Yahaba had _stolen_ it.

Yahaba slid the fabric through his fingers. “You gave it to me,” he said simply, “didn’t you?”

Kyoutani frowned at him, eyes darting to the grill, the scarf, his face, and back.

“That’s what you said? _You can keep it_.” Yahaba looked up at him. “And I told you I wanted to burn it. I wasn’t joking.”

Shifting from foot to foot, Kyoutani glowered at the grill, the twist of his mouth savage — angry, and in pain.

Yahaba watched him for a long moment, then held it out to him. “Unless you just want it back. You just have to say so.” In his belly was a knot of nerves, twisting tighter every second that ticked by.

It was several seconds.

Then it was several more.

Kyoutani finally reached out and took the scarf, holding it gingerly, as if it might reach up and strangle him before he had the wherewithal to stop it. He ran it through his fingers, first one hand, then the other, contemplative. Yahaba stood still and silent, watching him, his stomach twisting, twisting, twisting until he almost couldn’t draw breath.

Finally, Kyoutani’s face went slack and he dropped the scarf unceremoniously into the grill pit. “What now?” he asked in a flat voice.

Yahaba rummaged in his bag until found the sealed bag he had brought. Inside the bag he pulled out a tin can of paint thinner he’d scrounged up. He didn’t even look at Kyoutani as he poured it over the scarf and stuffed it deeper into the grill near the burned up pieces of black charcoal. The fabric was already smeared black and gray, and as the clear liquid soaked into it and burned their nostrils with the unmistakable scent of chemicals he took an intense pleasure from knowing he was one more step closer to helping Kyoutani escape the hold this man from his past had on him.

After digging through his bag again he pulled out a small book of matches. “Here,” he said.

Kyoutani took it and flipped it open, wrenching a match so hard from the paper that the ones around it fell to the ground. He slashed it across the bumpy phosphorus strip on the back and, almost like it cost him nothing at all, flicked it into the grill.

The soaked fabric caught immediately. Flames snarled to life so fast it made an audible _whoosh_ that was more feeling than sound. Kyoutani’s arm flashed out and pressed into Yahaba’s chest, fisting a hand in his shirt and nudging him safely back a few inches as the heat slapped into their faces. Yahaba gasped softly at the way the fabric writhed and curled as it burned and the colors of the fire that licked over it. He reached up and gripped Kyoutani’s arm, unable to look away, his eyes burning, the heat was so close. He wondered if Kyoutani could feel the way his heart was beating, frantic and fast.

Finally he tore his eyes away to look at Kyoutani, unsure what he expected to see there, but found that he looked grim and wounded. His teeth were bared in a vicious smile, but he did not seem happy. He said to the fire, “Fuck you.”

Yahaba gripped the strong muscles of his arm.

And suddenly Kyoutani lashed out, kicking at the grill so that Yahaba gasped, worried it might tip over. “I hate you!” Kyoutani snarled, reeling back as his foot connected again. Yahaba clutched at his sleeve to keep him upright. “I’m done,” he snapped, jerking his arm free and turning to stalk away.

“Shit,” Yahaba said, agitated, crouching and frantically throwing handfuls of dirt on the flame until it spluttered, then jabbing it with the stick until it was buried under the dirt and coals. He hoped it would be okay, especially still in the grill pit, that the last of the tiny, insubstantial flames would burn themselves out. He threw more dirt on it, just to be sure, then raced after Kyoutani, even going so far as to do little ballet leaps across the ground to move forward faster.

“Hey,” he called as he ran, breath puffing out in his haste. Kyoutani was striding fast across the sloping dark green lawn. “Kyouta — Kentarou, wait!”

But he didn’t stop, and it took a burst of frustrated energy for Yahaba to catch up to him and grab his arm. “Stop when I’m talking to —”

Kyoutani whipped around, ripping his arm back and grabbing Yahaba by the shirt. He shoved him backwards so fast that Yahaba nearly lost his footing, and was sure he would have toppled to the dirt had Kyoutani not practically picked him up and carried him.

His back slammed into a tree with such force it knocked the wind from him, and before he could catch it back Kyoutani kissed him. This kiss wasn’t anything like any of the ones before. It was like the fire — sudden and fierce, barely contained danger. His body pressed Yahaba against the tree, the hardback books in his bag cutting against Yahaba’s back. Yahaba’s mind reeled, the sky and the ground suddenly sideways.

He tried to turn his face away. “Sto—“

Kyoutani reached up and pressed his palms to Yahaba’s cheeks, his thumbs hooking on his chin and opening his mouth so he could kiss him again. This was less a kiss and more a _swallowing_. Kyoutani’s hands held him still, he leaned against him to keep him still, his breath was hot and fast against Yahaba’s mouth.

“Quit it!” He gasped, twisting his face away, trying to suck in air, but it was too muggy out, the air heavy with the scent of nightfall and the still water of the lake.

Kyoutani didn’t move back, didn’t remove his hands, but he leaned his face so that he could open his eyes and stare at him. His eyes were black, and the pain in them was raw like an open wound. Yahaba suddenly wondered if he’d made a mistake with the scarf.

They stared at each other for several breaths.

Their chests rose and fell.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

Yahaba said softly, “If it was going to be too much, you didn’t _have_ to do it.”

Kyoutani’s face twitched, muscles contorting for a moment into raw pain —nostrils flared, mouth pulling down, eyes widening under pointy brows— before he managed to control it again. “I’m—He—”

Despite the pain in his spine from the books, Yahaba held perfectly still. He was worried that if he moved too fast or spoke too soon that this version of Kyoutani—the wild, manic creature—would break and run, never to return.

Kyoutani’s hand moved slowly upward, his fingers making hooks into the back of Yahaba’s head and pulling him down so their faces touched like he wanted to telepathically communicate.

“I hate how much I still love him,” Kyoutani said in a cold tone, flat as a board.

Yahaba reached up, slow, slow, to wrap his arms around his shoulders. Kyoutani slumped against him, all the fight drained out of him. “Come on,” he whispered, “let me take you home.”

Kyoutani was still for a time, face pressed into the crook of Yahaba’s neck, nose buried under his collar. Finally, he nodded and pulled away, turning quickly. He pawed a hand behind him until Yahaba clasped it in his own and they set off, together this time, across the grass.


	8. Chapter 8

Just as they entered Yahaba’s apartment, Kyoutani seemed to realize where he was. He’d been quiet and sullen the whole way, his hand going slack in Yahaba’s but not letting go. He stopped in the doorway, raising his eyes to look at the apartment around him.

“I should go.”

Yahaba tried to pull him in, but Kyoutani dropped his hand. “No, please don’t…” Yahaba said gently, reaching for him. “Stay.”

Kyoutani shook his head. His voice still had that far away quality to it. “I’m not… okay to be around anyone else right now. It wouldn’t be fun for you.”

Yahaba moved out into the hallway with him, brushing his fingers down Kyoutani’s arms and tucking his fingers into his palm. “Please stay. We don’t have to talk or even be in the same room…” He squeezed his fingers. “But stay. I want …” _to help you_.

Kyoutani wouldn’t look at him. He was still as a statue, looking like even breathing was too difficult. Yahaba tugged gently on his hands, towards the door, and when Kyoutani didn’t protest he pulled him inside and steered him to the couch. He went into the kitchen to make tea—his mother had taught him that something warm on the belly can help bring the mood up— and by the time he came back he froze in the doorway.

Kyoutani was leaning on his knees, hands in his hair, knuckles pressed white against his skull.

Setting down the tea on the table, Yahaba reached out and laid a hand gingerly on his head. Kyoutani didn’t move other than to unlatch two fingers and wrap them around Yahaba’s. They were still for a long time, Yahaba worried to speak, Kyoutani unable to. Yahaba stroked his thumb across the hair over his ears, soothing him the best way he knew how, under the circumstances. Finally, Kyoutani disentangled his hands and sat up, finally having smelled the tea placed in front of him, and reached for it to take a drink.

His eyes were rimmed with red. Yahaba didn’t say anything about it.

Yahaba watched him closely, but he still looked too lost in his own thoughts to hold a conversation, so he took his own tea and moved to his easel. He ran a hesitant finger over the black ink he’d smeared onto the canvas. He’d finally gotten around to working on the fantastical beast from his nightmares, and he debated on if he wanted to use watercolors or oil or acrylic. He didn’t know what the beast was, it was something like a dragon, something like a demon, something like a griffin… but something far worse than the three combined, which is what it was. It had a thousand eyes, a million tiny scales, claws like scythes, great black leathery wings, columns of smoke rising from its body, great swaths of fire falling from its mouth. The rows of teeth were multitudinous and pointy.

He’d painstakingly inked it over the last week, and two days ago he’d taken a brush and a bottle of his favorite black fountain pen ink to fill in the darkest parts of the painting, the deepest shadows. The black wasn’t quite _vantablack_ , the black so black that it absorbed light, but it was close. The ink was waterproof and permanent, and could take days to dry properly. He could be sure that once he put it down nothing would move it. The ink was one of his favorites, made by hand by a one-man company, and the ink itself was _laser proof_ , which wasn’t helpful in the art world but was amusing to him.

Watercolors, he thought suddenly. He wanted to do watercolors. He glanced over at Kyoutani, who was slouched on the couch, the mug of tea pressed to his mouth, still deep in thought.

So Yahaba drug the box with his watercolor paints over, digging through the many tubes as he searched for the colors he wanted. The box so full that he could stick his arm in all the way up to his elbow. It was a loud, involved process that consisted of him dumping nearly the entire box on the floor in order to pull forth the correct colors. He gathered his supplies, glancing every now and then at Kyoutani, as if he could derive his emotional state just by looking at him. But Kyoutani didn’t move other than to drink his tea, so Yahaba turned his attention to his painting, willing to wait for Kyoutani to come back to him in his own time.

The painting process was slow and tedious. He remembered each scale being a hundred different colors in his dream, lit by some primordial process from inside the beast. He couldn’t do that, he wasn’t sure how to make them change color as you looked at them, he didn’t have that talent. But he could paint each one a slightly different shade, working through from the pure white fangs and face and going through the entire spectrum of the rainbow all the way down to the black tip of the beast’s tail. It was a process if there ever was one, and he had a tiny tiny brush that he was using to painstakingly put down light colors of each shade, and darkening each as he went along.

He was only one color in, the blood red scales giving way to a radioactive orange, when Kyoutani stood and set his cup down, moving over to watch. Yahaba swirled water through the brush and soaked it in orange to get a deep, lustrous color.

“What’s that?”

Yahaba took a moment to paint a few scales, letting the orange drain out of the brush as he went along. “A creature from my dreams.”

Kyoutani squinted at the painting, his head tilting just a bit as he studied it. “Looks dangerous.”

“It was. It killed me while I slept.”

Kyoutani blinked at him, then came closer, hooking his chin over Yahaba’s shoulder. “Why’d you draw it then? Shouldn’t you try to forget that stuff?”

Yahaba lowered his hand, leaning back a little into Kyoutani’s chest. “If I put it here then it’s out of my head… it can’t haunt me anymore.”

Kyoutani breathed out a soft little, “Oh…” He stayed still for a moment, eyes darting over the painting, studying it, then he pressed a kiss to his shoulder and backed up, sitting on Yahaba’s art chair. “You can keep going… I like watching you paint.”

Yahaba glanced at him, sitting backwards on his chair, arms over the back. Then he leaned forward to the easel again, painting the next layer of scales a softer, more supple shade of orange. It took several minutes, and by the time the row was done he wondered if he should say something to break the silence. There was something in the air, it was palpable yet subtle. Yahaba hated it; it was heavy on his chest and he wanted it gone. Or at least to probe it to discover if it was alive and could hurt them.

And then Kyoutani said in a very soft voice, “His name is Mateo.”

Yahaba’s brush paused only a moment in its strokes. He was quiet for a long time, doing first one scale, then another, then another. “Oh?” he finally said, unable to think of anything else to say. “Doesn’t sound Japanese.”

“He’s half Italian. His mother.”

Yahaba nodded, cleaning the brush and patting it dry. “Interesting.” The way it said it, he wasn’t sure if Kyoutani could hear just how uninterested he was. He hoped not, because he wanted Kyoutani to feel comfortable talking about him to Yahaba. He knew it would help him to escape his ex’s ghost.

“He came over when he was young. He spoke with an accent… I thought it was cute.”

Yahaba sneered at his painting, hiding his face.

“We started dating when we were nineteen.” Yahaba thought about that, about how he and Kyoutani were the same age, almost twenty four… and realized that if they had broke up about a year ago….

Yes. Four years was plenty of time to devote yourself to someone and have your heart ripped out.

“He’s younger than me, actually,” Kyoutani was saying. “Acted it too. He’s also—” he paused, seemed to realize that he was speaking in the present tense, and sighed, dropping his head to his crossed arms. His voice was muffled when he spoke next. “He was very spoiled. And demanding. And he was a … well,” He turned so he could lay his face on his arms to watch Yahaba paint. Yahaba made it a point to keep his face blank as he began to bleed the orange softer, preparing for yellow. “Doesn’t matter now, I guess.”

Yahaba wanted to say _sounds like a bitch to me_ , but did not.

“It was a good thing… for a long time. For a while. For…” he trailed off, for a breath or two. “But then it wasn’t. We stopped talking. He was mad that I still sent money to my mother. I told him I wasn’t going to stop. I wanted to go to school, he wanted to move back to Italy, wanted me to go, too. He said our food was shit and he missed his real home.” His voice was pitched lower and harsher as he repeated, “His _real_ home. As if I was just a damn vacation.”

Yahaba turned to look at him, eyebrows raised in shock. “But you’re not.”

Kyoutani shook his head. “I wasn’t good enough for him. And he let me know that for months… while I tried to … explain…. or make him love me again.”

Yahaba set his brush in a cup of water, frowning at him. He didn’t know how he felt that Kyoutani was finally opening up to him, _really_ opening up, and it was about _him—Mateo. What a stupid name._ But it didn’t matter if Yahaba spoke or not, or if he guarded his face, because Kyoutani’s eyes were far away, seeing something other than the painting in front of him.

“When he left me, it was after a week of double shifts at one job and overnight shifts at another. He said I was too busy for him, so he would find someone who _actually_ loved him.” His face twisted, snarling, but his voice was all hollowed out. “And he took most of our things, even the things that had always been mine, because I wasn’t there to stop him.”

“Bitch,” Yahaba said, flippant.

“Yeah. Guess so.” He took a long, deep breath. “You’re right.”

Yahaba gave him a curious look. “Usually. About what, specifically?”

Kyoutani’s eyes flicked to his. He looked awfully young just then, cheek pressed against his arm, broken heart bare to the world. “I can't let him control me anymore. He's gone, now. I have to move on, too.” His eyes slid away, back to the painting. “I didn't want to… I hoped he would come back, irrationally… but he's not. And even if he did, it wouldn't be good for either of us.”

“No, it wouldn't be.”

“It just… makes me so mad. All I did for him, all I gave to him, everything I —” he waved a hand angrily, as if swatting a very annoying fly. “Just threw all four years away, like it was nothing to him.”

Yahaba nodded slowly, swirling the brush through a cup of clear water to clean it. “I’m sorry he hurt you like that.”

Kyoutani grunted in agreement. They were quiet while Yahaba cleaned his brush several times then set it on the edge of the table to air dry. “Wait,” he said suddenly as an idea struck him, “he never went to Italy!”

Kyoutani pointed at him by way of reply, sliding off the chair and moved back to the rest of the living room. He picked up his empty mug, then contemplated it with an odd tilt to his head.

“Done with that?” Yahaba asked, moving past him into the kitchen.

Kyoutani followed him, bringing with him the empty tea mugs, and the dirty water cups that littered Yahaba’s desk. “You know,” he said, as if he was continuing a thought, “Matt never cleaned _anything.”_

Yahaba scowled as he rinsed off his palette (which was just a dinner plate). They were calling him by name now? “So he was entitled _and_ lazy?”

Kyoutani shrugged, running a finger over the rim of one of the water cups. “I never really thought about it until now. Guess that's why I clean everything. Cause I've done it since we lived together.”

Yahaba rolled his eyes. “Well, you don't have to do it here.” He took the mug from his hands and dumped all the dirty dishes in the sink. “There. See? Easy.” He turned back, smiling. “So…” he began, slowly, nervously; he didn’t want to change the subject but he had to because of the time. “I've got to go to dance class soon. But…” He reached out and took Kyoutani’s hand, gently stroking his thumb over his knuckles. “I’d like it if you’d be here when I got back. You can stay while I'm gone or… or you can go and come back, or I could come to your place? I just… I’d like to spend time with you tonight.”

Kyoutani watched Yahaba’s fingers move over his. “I might need to go home and get some clothes but I can come back.”

Yahaba smiled, pleased. “Yeah? My class is about two hours so that’s plenty of time, right?”

He nodded, squeezing his fingers. “I’ve never seen you in your dance wear.”

“It’s nothing special,” Yahaba said with a laugh. “Just a bunch of old, runny tights and cut up t-shirts.”

“Sounds hot.”

Yahaba snorted a laugh. “Well I’ve got to get ready, so you’re about to find out.”

              

* * *

In class, Yahaba stood at the freestanding barre with Ennoshita and Alisa, listening to her detail her date with one of the wild, loud members of the group that Akaashi’s boyfriend had brought in the studio earlier in the week.

Yahaba was leaning on the barre, stretching one of his legs and scrolling through his emails while he listened, occasionally making interested noises as she gushed and rambled.

“And, oh my god, her lips are _so soft_ I need to ask her what chapstick she uses or something, ‘cause _damn_ — Yahaba? You okay?”

Yahaba had made a little noise in his chest. All the blood rushed from his brain and straight to his face. “Oh no,” he muttered. He’d gotten a picture text.

A picture text from Kyoutani.

A picture of the _naked drawing of him_.

A second text came through: _care to expln?_

Yahaba thought that the noise he made could only be heard by dogs or possibly bats. He collapsed, losing all higher functions as he dropped to the floor and nearly sobbed in frustration.

“Oh my god!” Alisa shouted, dropping beside him, hands fluttery.

“What happened?” Ennoshita asked, leaning over his prone form and looking distressed.

Apparently the noise he’d made had been _quite loud_ because everyone in the class crowded around. Akaashi and Suga knelt down beside him. “Yahaba??” Akaashi said, touching his shoulder. “What’s going on? Are you hurt?” He sounded panicked.

Yahaba clutched his phone to his chest and moaned into the floor. “Nooooooooooo.”

There was a moment of silence and Ennoshita whispered, “I think he got a text?”

Suga and Akaashi grabbed his arms and rolled him over — he was boneless with his mortification — and Suga poked at his ribs. “What happened?”

“I’m — oh God — he found — oh _nooo_ …”

Suga and Akaashi exchanged a glance, having a silent conversation. Suga nodded with what was decided and reached forward, deftly plucking the phone from his hands. “Who’s hurt you, Shigeru?”

Tiny little Kaori piped up, “I’ll stab them.”

Yahaba leapt to life, straining for his phone. “No!”

But Suga rose elegantly to his feet, moving away as he opened his phone. He paused when he saw the picture, then his face broke into such a wicked grin that an imp would have been jealous. “Oh my _god_.”

Akaashi and Oikawa were rushing to stand behind him to see what he was gushing about.

Their faces transformed too, Akaashi with a delighted horror and Oikawa plain admiration.

“Holy shit,” Oikawa said, bluntly.

“No wonder you wanted a week off,” Akaashi added.

Yahaba jumped up, but Alisa shoved past him to turn Suga’s hand so she could see it. She gasped, “ _Ohhhhh,_ Yahaba!”

“Give it back!” Yahaba shouted, but Suga whirled away, out of his grasp, and rushed to show everyone else in the class. Finally, Yahaba managed to run at him and leap onto his back and, with a shout of surprise, they both tumbled to the floor in a tangle of limbs. They wrestled for the phone, but Suga managed to keep it away until Oikawa came and scooped it up.

“Goddammit!” Yahaba shrieked, rolling off Suga.

He pinched the screen to zoom in, his eyes widening appreciatively. “You draw naked men a lot, do you? The level of _detail_ —”

Yahaba stalked over to him and punched his arm so hard he yelped and dropped the phone. “Stop ogling my boyfriend,” Yahaba snapped, taking it back and cradling his phone against his chest.

Oikawa gestured to the phone. “I didn’t know you were _that_ good. Why have you never offered to draw _me_? I’m clearly the best model.” He struck an obnoxious pose, one that Yahaba definitely _could draw_ but would piss him off even as he did it.

Yahaba didn’t get to answer because Suga wrapped his arms around him from behind, hugging him. “Boyfriend? Finally! The last one was — ugh, ass. Don’t get me started. I’m so excited for you!”

Yahaba looked down at his phone, frowning. “Well…I don’t really know if we’re that yet, but I think we’re close.”

Oikawa sidled closer, sliding as he walked, and draped his arms around the both of them. “If that drawing is true to life, don’t let that one go. Hoo-boy.” He fanned himself over-dramatically.

Yahaba blushed furiously, trying to pull away and failing as Suga tugged Akaashi into the hug and Alisa joined too. Then the other dancers all came and made a big, sappy, bundle of arms around him. His last breakup had been messy, and he’d made the mistake of coming to class immediately after and breaking down halfway through, so they all heard the mess that his life had been back then.

“Can we start class now?” he asked, face hot, secretly pleased at the show of support, but also wishing that the entire class hadn’t seen his almost-boyfriend’s dick. He hoped Kyoutani never found out.

Suga stood on his toes so he could lay his head on Yahaba’s. “Aren’t you going to _explain_?”

Yahaba made a series of scoffing noises, waving his arms and dispersing the dancers as he dropped his phone into his bag. “Shut the fuck up, Suga, you little shit,” he said without vitriol, and walked to his place at the barre as Akaashi laughed and picked up the remote.

 

* * *

At home, Yahaba poked his head into his apartment, cautiously gazing around. He stepped inside, closing the door softly behind him. “Hello?”

No answer.

The tightness in his chest shifted, twisting a little because he couldn’t explain, and a little because if Kyoutani wasn’t here… was he really mad? He trudged through the hallway to the living room and saw the portrait was laying on top of his canvases. A little purple sticky note had been attached to the corner of it. Yahaba moved closer, nervously, and pulled it off to read it.

Kyoutani had tiny, compact handwriting that he had to squint to read properly. _not mad. flattered… why not put yourself in it, too?_

Yahaba laughed, and considered it. He’d never done a self-portrait… but maybe he could try. He tried to think if he could work it into this drawing or if he should just scrap it and start a new one as he went to his bedroom, and stopped short.

Kyoutani was sprawled out on his bed, only in shorts and snoring gently. His headphones were looped over his head and even from here Yahaba could hear the tinny sounds of loud music. He was shirtless with one hand thrown across his belly, head tossed to the side. He looked deep in sleep.

Yahaba moved closer, carefully reaching down and removing the headphones to set them aside so they wouldn’t get broken during the night. Kyoutani shifted in his sleep, turning over onto his side and curling up. He smiled, liking how young Kyoutani looked as he slept. He touched Kyoutani’s shoulder before he went to take a shower.

He was only halfway through scrubbing shampoo through his hair when something moved in the corner of his eye and he looked up to see Kyoutani hovering near the door. He waved a hand as he stepped under the steaming spray of the water to rinse his hair.

While his eyes were closed, scrubbing furiously, he felt a burst of cold air as Kyoutani opened the door and stepped in, his hands finding Yahaba’s ribs and sliding around his body. He smiled, turning his head, pushing the wet hair from his eyes. “Good morning.”

Kyoutani rubbed his face across Yahaba’s shoulder blade like a dog marking his scent or trying to pick up a new one. “Have a good class?” His voice was still thick with sleep, and Yahaba reached back and touched his head, rubbing gently so that he rumbled in response.

Yahaba chuckled, leaning back a little and letting Kyoutani move closer, sticking himself against his back, eyes still closed as water began to soak his hair. He seemed to still be asleep, held up by Yahaba’s body. “More or less,” he said. “What did you do while I was gone?”

Kyoutani nosed his way up the back of Yahaba’s throat, snuggling into the back of his hair. “Got clothes. Took a nap.” His arms slithered around, hand sliding up and down Yahaba’s belly. “I have to work in the morning.”

Yahaba smiled. “And I’ve got class.”

Kyoutani pressed a kiss to the curve of his neck. A warm, purring creature lifted its head in Yahaba’s belly, slinking low and curling deep arousal around him.

“I’ve got an _early_ class…” he said, but it wasn’t a _no_.

“We can hurry,” Kyoutani said softly, his fingers gentle feathers up Yahaba’s belly and landing on his chest, thumb stroking over his nipple. He grazed his teeth over Yahaba’s shoulder.

Yahaba turned, suddenly, grabbing Kyoutani’s face in his hands and pulling him up for a wet kiss. “No more biting.”

Kyoutani actually fucking _pouted_ , his bottom lip poking out so that Yahaba wanted to suck on it, and then he did.

“Why?” He clicked his teeth, flashing rows of white.

Yahaba laughed, pushing his fingers back into his hair and kissing him again. “It’s summer, I can’t keep wearing high collared shirts. It’s too hot.”

“Under your clothes, then?”

Yahaba hesitated. “It hurts.”

Kyoutani’s knuckles stroked his belly, traveled lower, traced the arch of his hip bone. “You like it, though.”

Yahaba grimaced, because it was true. He hummed in thought, stroking Kyoutani’s ears with his thumbs. “One,” he said. “You get _one_.”

“Per fuck or orgasm? Cause I can give you at least—”

“Oh, fuck you!” Yahaba laughed, pushing him a little, but gasped as Kyoutani lashed out and got his hand around his neck to pull him down for another kiss, holding him there as if Yahaba wouldn't just stay and allow himself to suffocate before breaking the kiss.

After they were both panting and breathless, Yahaba reached behind him and slapped the water off. “I don’t want my bed wet.”

“Fine, how do you feel about carpet burn on your knees?” Kyoutani’s smile was slick and betrayed just how much he’d actually really like that.

“Alright, pervert.”

Kyoutani dragged him out of the shower, the both of them stumbling towards the bedroom, wrapped around each other. The bed hit the back of Yahaba’s legs and he twisted, saying, “Not the bed—” before Kyoutani pressed him down on it and shut him up with a kiss.

 _Fuck it_ , Yahaba thought, _it’s just the comforter, I’ve got another in the closet._ He fell back, dragging Kyoutani on top of him, their skin still wet and dripping. He was learning that Kyoutani, as he remembered how _much_ he liked kissing, wouldn’t kiss with just his mouth. He kissed with his entire body, curling over Yahaba, hands never stopping their exploration, even his legs hooking around Yahaba’s in an effort to have as much of their bodies touching as possible.

One of Kyoutani’s hands slid between their bodies to grip Yahaba’s cock, stroking him, thumb pressed to the tip, making Yahaba arch up into him with a whine.

“You’re so hard,” Kyoutani said, grinning. “Leaking onto my hand. You want me that much?”

“Fuck,” Yahaba murmured. “You still gotta ask?”

Kyoutani stroked him once, smirking. “You gonna cry again?”

Yahaba kicked his ribs. “Shut the fuck up.” He sat up, the buzzing desire inside him reminded him just how much he needed him. They’d not seen each other all week and, while logically Yahaba knew that he’d just gone a whole year without sex… the idea of going another _second_ without it made his mind rebel so all he could think was _now, now, now_.

Kyoutani slithered down, trailing kisses down his throat and dragging his tongue over his nipple. Yahaba shuddered, a white hot flame licking just under his skin. One of his hands gripped hard in Kyoutani’s hair, the other kneading his shoulder, nails pressing into his skin.

“I told you,” he warned, “you only get one… so —” His voice fell away with a choked off gurgling sound as Kyoutani sucked his nipple into his mouth, hard, just to shut him up. He was hard, so hard it _hurt_. He could feel the way Kyoutani smiled against his skin, then he was pulling away, his breath hot and moist as he breathed, moving lower, sucking little love marks into his belly before he made it to his cock and swallowed him down with exactly zero hesitation.

The heat radiating off him was searing hot, burning his desire into Yahaba’s skin with fingers hard enough to bruise. His hands pushed Yahaba’s thighs apart to give himself more room, his nails making tiny little half crescents into the soft sensitive skin of his thigh.

Yahaba’s blood was singing, on fire, all centered in one place and not much left for coherent thought, but still he managed, “Thought you wanted to fuck?”

Kyoutani raised his eyes — and Yahaba almost came from the very sight of his mouth around him, intense eyes dark and focused wholly on him. He pulled his mouth off, and licked a long stripe up him before letting him go. “What,” his mouth was pink and swollen from kisses, and his ran his tongue over his top lip, “you don’t like my mouth?” He quoted from their first night together and Yahaba smacked his head.

“Ass.”

Kyoutani smirked, ducking his head to scrape his teeth across Yahaba’s thighs, making him jerk and yelp a little in surprise. “Fuckin’ — turn over. _Now_.” He demanded it in such a way that it still somehow seemed a question, as if he couldn’t tell just how much Yahaba wanted him, too.

He scrambled to obey, squirming onto his belly, then almost losing his footing when Kyoutani yanked his lower half off the bed so he was standing, bending over the bed. Kyoutani pressed a palm to the center of his back, pushing him down so that when he leaned against him his cock stroked the space between his ass and his dick _just right_.

Kyoutani leaned down to kiss his shoulder, his fingers spread on his sides. “God, you’re pretty.” This time, he didn’t whisper it, or intend Yahaba not to hear. He said it right into his ear, the puff of his breath making Yahaba shiver. “You gonna be mad if I finger you till you come all over your bed?”

Yahaba’s tongue felt plastered to the roof of his mouth. Kyoutani talking _dirty_ to him, in that low, barely gentle voice that came from somewhere just behind his breastbone was making Yahaba’s hips rock upwards in a silent plea. “Yes, I will be!” he said, not caring that his voice was half a squeak. “I want you inside me.”

“Oh,” Kyoutani said, his voice a threat and a promise, “you’ll get it. But first…” He trailed off, losing interest in his own sentence, leaning over to the bedside table and pawing around in the drawer until he found the condoms he’d left and the lube that Yahaba had. It was thicker than Kyoutani’s and, therefore —in Yahaba’s opinion— better. He spread it generously over his fingers, and dribbled _too much_ over Yahaba’s ass.

“Gross,” he muttered at the slick feel of it. “Any particular reason you’re wasting— _ahfuck!”_

Kyoutani had pressed two fingers inside him without much preamble, his free hand planted on his back to hold him still. “Stop squirming.”

Yahaba made a protesting scoff, rocking back, gripping the sheets for leverage and rising up on his toes to force his fingers deeper. He sucked down air, sitting up on his elbows and canting backwards until a loud _smack_ crashed into his ears and sent a jolt of lighting from his toes to his ears.

“Ow!” he shouted, turning to look at Kyoutani. “You _sadist_.”

Kyoutani looked at his red-palmed hand, and the matching pink flesh of Yahaba’s ass where he’d spanked him. “You never said you didn’t like it. Now lay still and let me enjoy this.” He twisted his fingers and Yahaba groaned, dropping his head to the sheets. He wondered if this precisely in-control version of Kyoutani was a front, or revenge, or something for the scarf burning, for Yahaba seeing how vulnerable he’d been. Or if it was just another facet of his personality. He liked it, no matter what it was. He liked the soft, unguarded side of him and he liked this fierce, demanding side of him, too.

Kyoutani was relentless, twisting his fingers, the sweet burn of the in and out slide of them making Yahaba’s knees go a little weak. He was grateful for the bed underneath him, both to hold him up and so he could rock his hips against to provide some sort of friction for his cock, even though he heard Kyoutani chuckling at his desperation. He was on _fire_ and Kyoutani’s hand slid across his skin, just touching, just feeling, both an accelerant to the flames and an icy cold breath of fresh air on his overheated skin.

“I like your muscles,” Kyoutani said, conversationally, even though the sounds of him fingering Yahaba were _loud_ in the room. He leaned down, lining kisses across his shoulders and down the curve of his spine. The little wet places he left were little ice cubes in the air. He pressed his fingers in and _up_ , and Yahaba’s entire body jerked and he let out a broken half cry of pleasure. Kyoutani’s hand roved across the tense set of his shoulders. “The way you look when you’re under me is…” he trailed off, stretching his fingers, just enough so the Yahaba cried out and threw his head back.

“I could do this forever,” he said, reverent, his hand stroking across Yahaba’s hip. The tip of a third finger touched his rim, sliding in beside the other two.

Yahaba’s vision swam, first with bursts of blinding color and then tunneling into a very specific blackness that had him closing his eyes to bask in the pleasure. “Ohh,” he moaned, not caring how wrecked he sounded, “Fuck, _please_ fuck me now. Please, _please, please._ ”

Kyoutani rocked his fingers, in and out, just to prove to both of them how well he’d opened Yahaba up. “Come on,” he said, his voice a little tight. “Get up, I have plans.”

Yahaba turned around to scowl at him. “Excuse me?” Then he grunted as Kyoutani pulled his fingers away, and he was left open and clenching and _wanting_.

Kyoutani grabbed the condoms and _left the room_.

“What — “ Yahaba stared after him, eyes wide, “Hey, what the fuck — where are you going?!”

Kyoutani called to him from the living room, sounding like he was carrying something heavy. That’s what got Yahaba up and moving, his _dick throbbing_. He snatched a clean towel from his bathroom before padding out into the living room. The sight that he found made him pause, squinting in confusion.

Kyoutani turned to look at him, and the sight of seeing him both from the front, and from the back in the mirror he’d set up on the couch was _nice_. He’d pulled the hallway mirror from its peg and set it up on one arm of the couch.

“What’s that?” he asked cautiously.

Kyoutani smirked, holding out a hand for him. Yahaba laid the towel across the back of the couch and inched forward, taking his hand. Kyoutani tugged him forward, pressing their bodies together, wrapping his arms around Yahaba’s waist to make sure they were as close as possible. Yahaba sighed into his mouth, rocking against him. Kyoutani’s slick hand slid between them, spread wide to grip them together. The feel of them together, red hot, searing, made Yahaba moan and writhe.

They kissed again, Yahaba licking his way into Kyoutani’s mouth, dragging his tongue across the roof of his mouth so he bucked against him, and snaked a hand into Yahaba’s hair to pull his head down. They couldn’t _be_ any closer, but Kyoutani tried anyway. They rocked against each other, panting into their kisses. The smell of them together, all manly musk, filled his nose, tingled through his belly.

“Don’t make me beg again,” Yahaba said against his mouth.

Kyoutani smiled, and nudged him towards the other end of the couch. “Bend over,” he said, pointing to the arm.

“Why?” Yahaba asked, barely glancing away from Kyoutani’s mouth to look at the couch, and the mirror, but his eyes flicked back to his mouth and he dove down for another ravenous kiss. Kyoutani pulled away, breathless, eyes bright with lust. He pointed to the couch.

“Well? You were the one begging for it. Bend over.”

Moving to the arm, Yahaba did as he was told, a warm, bubbly feeling of pleasure rising up his belly. He’d never done this over his own couch before, and the angle was strange, the arm pushing into his belly. Kyoutani slotted in behind him, the thick curve of his cock sliding into the crack of Yahaba’s ass.

“God, I wanna…” Kyoutani started, then stopped, voice strained, heavy with desire.

Yahaba knew what he was going to say, though, and bit his lip nervously. It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t sanitary, but he wanted Kyoutani to fuck him without the condom. He’d never wanted that in his life — knew it wouldn’t happen, not until they both got tested and re-tested and _trusted_ each other and —

—but _God_ he was so… so close. So warm and hot and real and _right there_.

But Yahaba heard Kyoutani ripping open the foil, and he moved away, was gone for a few seconds while he rolled it on. “I want you to do something for me, Shigeru.” He slicked up his cock, leisurely stroking himself.

Yahaba glanced over his shoulder, his fingers spreading on the sofa cushion. “What else do you want from me? I’m giving you my body.”

Kyoutani grinned, spreading his hand over his back. “You see the mirror?”

More than a little sarcastic, “No, I missed that detail.”

He was rewarded with a second slap to his ass, not hard, more fun than pain. “Don’t be a smart-ass. I want you,” he slid one hand up Yahaba’s back, slipping his fingers around his throat, turning his face up to the mirror, “to watch as I fuck you. I want you to add yourself to that drawing you made. Both of us.” He shifted his hips, the tip of his cock brushing over Yahaba’s entrance.

Yahaba shuddered out a gasp at the sensation. Kyoutani’s hand tightened around his throat, and moved up to his jaw to keep his head up.

“Watch,” Kyoutani whispered, pushing inside him.

Yahaba let out a desperate little sound, the air caught in his lungs. Kyoutani rocked in slowly, inch by inch, Yahaba’s body clenching around him. “Oh, God…” His toes tingled, his cock throbbing hard between his legs. He wanted to touch himself, wanted to turn around so Kyoutani could kiss him, but he was trapped. Kyoutani leaned against his body, all the way inside him, his hips flush against Yahaba’s ass.

Kyoutani reached up and wiped his fingers on the towel, then stroked his knuckles down the bumps of his spine. His hand slid upward, his fingers cupping around Yahaba’s jaw. “Hey,” he said, sharp, “your eyes are closed.”

Yahaba flicked his eyes open, shivering. He was sure Kyoutani could feel the pounding of his pulse under his fingers and around his cock. He’d never seen his face during sex before, and he thought he looked weird. His still wet hair plastered to his forehead, his own lips were pink and plush from Kyoutani’s kisses and his own teeth sinking in. When Kyoutani rolled his hips Yahaba’s eyes fluttered, but he obediently kept them open.

He wasn’t looking at himself, though. He was watching Kyoutani’s face, ravenous and rapt with attention at the place they were connected. He looked like he was in pain, except for the dark, dark color of his eyes. He held Yahaba’s face up, his grip firm, as he began to pull out, and back in, slow and steady, insistent. The drag of his cock was maddeningly perfect, and Yahaba’s breath punched out of him, tight over his throat.

Suddenly Kyoutani’s hands were gone, latching onto his hips in a bruising grip so he could pull him hard against him. Yahaba yelped, dropping to his elbows, gasping as Kyoutani fucked into him again, each thrust well placed to make Yahaba cry out. His mouth was pooling with saliva as he dropped to his shoulder, scrambling a hand back until Kyoutani took it, holding his hand and squeezing.

“You feel so good,” Kyoutani breathed out, rolling his hips, leaning over to sink his teeth into Yahaba’s shoulder. “Fuck,” he mumbled into his skin. “You’re so hot inside…”

Yahaba rocked backward, tilting his body, and Kyoutani grunted in pleasure, resuming his torturous thrusting, so that Yahaba’s whole world shrank to a point — just below his navel, where pressure bloomed and built. “Kentarou…” he muttered, boneless, slumping. “‘m so close… need…”

Kyoutani slipped his hands under his chest and pulled him upwards, so his back was flush against Kyoutani’s strong chest. He dropped his head back onto Kyoutani’s shoulder, and moaned deep in his belly when he bit down hard into Yahaba’s shoulder. The position made his thrusts shallow, but perfect. “Let me hear you,” he said into Yahaba’s skin, thrusting slowly, one hand pinching his nipple.

Yahaba yelped, arching, not holding his voice back, not caring that his neighbors could probably hear him moaning. Kyoutani’s hand slid down, gripping his cock, twisting his wrist so that Yahaba was overwhelmed with sensation. Pressure on his cock, pressure in his belly, sliding up somewhere deep in his body, somewhere he couldn’t name, could only feel. He slumped in Kyoutani’s arms, held up by the strength of his body, and let himself ride the wave of pleasure that burst through him.

He had the single thought _oh no, not the upholstery_ as he came, shouting, and Kyoutani thrust twice into him before his mouth fell open against Yahaba’s shoulder in a shuddering groan as he finished, too.

They were still for a moment, Kyoutani panting against his shoulder, his body trembling with aftershocks of his orgasm. When they finally separated, their skin sticky with sweat, Kyoutani said, “Wait — you didn’t look, did you?”

Yahaba leaned against the couch, getting the towel and wiping it across the fabric to try and make sure it didn’t stain. “Put my mirror back,” he said, breathless and still panting. His muscles trembled, like they did after a long dance, but better.

Kyoutani huffed, disappearing in the bathroom for a few minutes before coming back in shorts. As he hefted the mirror back into place he said, “Can’t believe you didn’t look. I want my drawing, Shigeru.”

Yahaba laughed, a little shakily. He’d gotten two large cups of water from the kitchen and handed one to him. “I’ll look next time.”

“Next time?”

“Well,” Yahaba grinned, taking a sip of his water, “first I’ll buy a bigger mirror. Maybe one of those big standing ones. We’ll put it right by the bed.”

Kyoutani chuckled, coming over to slip a hand over his ribs. “I like that idea.”

They moved back to the bedroom and Yahaba glanced at the bathroom. “I want to shower again…” His eyes flicked to Kyoutani. “But I’m not sure you’d let me get in and out unmolested.”

Kyoutani snorted with amusement. “You’re safe from me.” He dropped onto the bed, face down, and groaned a little.

“Oh _you’re tired_?” Yahaba asked sarcastically, patting Kyoutani’s shoulder. “You who went to class and worked at the shelter and _then_ had ballet class and _then_ had your brains fucked out. Yeah, you rest.”

Kyoutani only turned his head to grin at him. “Thanks, I’m gonna go to bed now.”

“No,” Yahaba flicked his ear. “You can’t sleep till I get back.” He said, and retreated to the bathroom. He took a quick shower, just to rinse off, and took a few minutes to actually dry his hair before going back to the bedroom and nudging Kyoutani with his toe. “Move over.”

Kyoutani grumbled and shifted, rolling over on his back, still spread out though. “I was asleep.”

“I told you not to fall asleep without me,” Yahaba said, crawling into bed. He tugged on the sheets. “You’re not even under them! Get up.” He yanked and prodded Kyoutani until he grumbled and mumbled and snapped and snarled and finally got up and moved under the blankets. “Now come here.”

“I told you I don’t cuddle,” Kyoutani muttered.

Yahaba slid over close to him, snuggling his face into his shoulder. “Shut up and hug me.”

Kyoutani hesitated, until Yahaba pouted up at him. Then his arms came around him, hooking under his back and pulling him until Yahaba squirmed up against him and kissed him gently. “Why do you like this?” Kyoutani asked.

“You tell me.” Yahaba laid his head down, closing his eyes and stroking his fingers over Kyoutani’s arms.

Kyoutani grumbled, settling down a little. “I… I don’t know.”

“Just think about it,” Yahaba whispered, kissing his collarbone and the hollow underneath it.

He was quiet, his breathing slow and even, the rhythm of his heart a steady thud against Yahaba’s ear. He was quiet for so long that Yahaba had almost dozed off, his body spent and exhausted. But then he said, “You’re very warm…”

Yahaba breathed out a little hum. “You are too.”

“But doesn’t it get hot?”

Yahaba shrugged. “Worth it to me.”

“Oh.” Kyoutani’s arms tightened around him and he laid his cheek on Yahaba’s hair. “Then… me, too.”


	9. Chapter 9

Summer came and went.

Yahaba and Kyoutani spent as much time together as their schedules would allow. In the summer they went to the pond to feed the ducks, and were subsequently chased off by the angry mother ducks when they attempted to pet the ducklings.

They spent an entire day on a tiny rented boat with buckets of ice and little squirmy worms. They caught a hundred tiny fish and then tried to use the little fish to catch big fish and ultimately failed when they realized neither of them were good fishermen.

They spent a long weekend on the beach, laying out and tanning until Yahaba complained of the heat and they plunged into the ocean to cool off and playfully attempt to drown each other in the waves. As the sun set each day they sat at the edge of the water, seeing how far their feet would sink into the wet, sticky sand and catching shells that washed up. Yahaba took them home and filled a little jar with them so he could look at them and remember.

They spent days and weeks and days at the shelter, cleaning and organizing and walking and playing with the animals. Yahaba even got his own t-shirt, and he made Kyoutani wear his matching one whenever they went. He bought a new sketchbook dedicated only to dogs, and drew each dog making their best faces, and by the end of the summer Yahaba had fallen in love with nearly all the animals, even a few cats. He almost cried tears of joy when his favorite little bull-dog was adopted by a family that seemed to love him the moment they met him. Yahaba spent so much time there and sent so many pictures to his parents that his mother donated a sizable chunk of money to them anonymously.

And when it rained they went to museums. Yahaba rambled on about the paintings— about the structure and the brushwork and anything else he could see in them— and Kyoutani following along behind him, hand on his back, listening intently even though he didn’t understand. They went to the big local library with the reading room on the top floor, surrounded by glass walls —baking hot in the summer and immensely lovely in the rain, with the sound of the droplets pounding and rolling down the panes. Kyoutani liked books more than Yahaba thought, and would lose himself in a random novel plucked from the shelf each time they went while Yahaba did homework or studied beside him. Usually they held hands, or Kyoutani would lay his head on the table while reading and Yahaba would pet his hair the way he liked, just behind his ears, and eventually Kyoutani would fall asleep until Yahaba woke him with gentle kisses so they could go home.

Yahaba took him to the antique shops he loved, where they spent hours searching through old postcards and comic collections, buying a few that they liked and hanging them up as art in Kyoutani’s apartment since Yahaba still couldn’t figure out what painting to do for him. They even found an original N64 in near perfect condition along with several games so that they spent a loud, hectic evening competing against each other. Kyoutani won, and he demanded Yahaba reward him with very _specific_ sexual favors, which Yahaba gleefully agreed to.

When they weren’t out exploring the city they were at one of their apartments, bingeing old anime or new tv-shows, watching every movie they could think of that they liked. They gorged on ramen and popcorn (not _usually_ at the same time) and Kyoutani brought Yahaba cream-puffs and salmon and sushi just because he knew he liked them.

The month that Yahaba spent cramming for his exams Kyoutani sat with him and listened to him complain about how the numbers swam in his head. And when Yahaba became too tense, and tried to lose himself in sex, wanting it to hurt because his _brain hurt_ … Kyoutani made him slow down. Made Yahaba simply lay still while Kyoutani kissed and touched him all over, gentle and reassuring.Sometimes, when neither of them rushed, when they both wanted to simply kiss and touch for the act of being close to another person — sometimes — those times felt less like _sex_ and more like _making love_.

Neither of them said this aloud, even though they both felt it.

And when autumn floated through the city they drank hot cider in the park and made a trip up to the mountains for fresh air and to watch the maple leaves change color and spent all night sky-gazing and cuddling on a blanket in an empty field.

Yahaba had his first small gallery show that season. Kyoutani came to support him and met his mother, who also came to support him (he noticed his father did not, though said nothing). When he introduced them they had a very polite, very short conversation before Kyoutani moved away to give them a moment, because his mother’s eyebrows dictated that’s what she wanted.

“He’s very surly,” she said.

“He’s not,” Yahaba told her, fingering the business cards he’d made.

“He could stand to smile sometimes.”

“He smiles all the time, but he thinks you’re judging him.”

“I am judging him,” she sniffed, affronted. “Everyone judges everyone.”

Yahaba rolled his eyes. “Please just…” but he didn’t know if she would get mad if he said _go away_. Probably. He handed her some of the cards with his number and email on a background of a sample of his work in tiny business card format. “Here, can you give these to your friends?”

“Oh, sweetie,” she took them, but gave him a dubious look, “do you really have time for all this? What about your classes?”

“I passed all my classes, mother. It’s fine. I promise.”

She waved hand around to indicated the room at large. “All this… this is just a hobby, right?”

At that moment he saw Akaashi and his boyfriend coming in, and excused himself to go and greet them.

And in winter, just before the water became deadly cold, they snuck onto the pier at midnight and dared each other to leap into the black icy water. They agreed to do it together, and raced towards the end… but Yahaba chickened out at the last second, and watched with giddy, childlike wonder as Kyoutani’s pale ass plunged naked into the ocean.

Yahaba knelt over the edge of the pier, giggling. “How’s the water?”

“F-f-f-f-fuck —” Kyoutani tried to scream at him, but his teeth were chattering and he had to save his breath to swim to the edge and haul himself up the ladder. He’d approached Yahaba with a mischievous glint in his eye and Yahaba shrieked with terror-laced laughter and tried to run around him back to the safety of the clubhouse where they’d left their clothes.

Kyoutani yanked him up, arms about his waist, and deftly hurled him off the side.

The water was bitterly cold, and Yahaba felt every ounce of blood shrink into his torso to protect his vital organs as knifes and needles and sandpaper raced over his skin at the contact. He burst gasping from the water and shrieked, “Ass—asshole!”

Kyoutani smiled down at him from the pier, dripping wet himself. He held a hand out and hauled Yahaba out of the water. They gasped against each other, shivering and shuddering with cold, and rushed back to the clubhouse at the end of the pier, sharing a lukewarm shower until their nerves were back to life, then turning the water so hot it steamed as they shared touches and kisses, both grateful that it was so late and no one else was around.

Sometimes Kyoutani would take him to dance class, and would watch from the door for a few minutes before he left, but he was always back to greet Yahaba when he was done. And sometimes Yahaba would go to the club when Kyoutani was working, and bring him water and liquor to keep him hydrated and sit in the booth with him, running his fingers over Kyoutani’s tight black muscle T. When he was in the mood, Yahaba would go down onto the floor and dance among the crowd, just having fun, until one time another man slid up behind him and touched his hips, and Yahaba locked eyes with Kyoutani the whole time they were grinding against one another.

Which had been a mistake, because when they got home Kyoutani reminded him exactly who he was dating with an overabundance of teeth and sex. It was such a long, drawn out night (punishment, Yahaba knew, but he didn’t mind) that he had to skip both his school and his dance classes the next day to sleep and replenish all his fluids.

Yahaba spent two months getting Kyoutani to initiate cuddling at night. This involved lots of small, slow touches. He would trace the lines of Kyoutani’s muscles in his arms, the veins in his throat, the shape of his bones under his skin, and then taking Kyoutani’s hand and having him do the same to him. The touches weren’t sexual, they were sweet and tender, neither of them saying anything while they watched each other in the darkness. One night Kyoutani reached out to hold his hand, and Yahaba slid one arm up under Kyoutani’s head, curling his hand so he could stroke his hair. In the moonlight from the window Kyoutani’s skin seemed pale, his eyes soft and hooded as thoughts raced through his mind. Yahaba kissed his head, laying their folded hands on his hip and, after a time, Kyoutani leaned forward and laid his head on Yahaba’s chest, curling up against him. They fell asleep like that, and in the morning were even closer.

After that, the cuddling was no longer an issue.

The air began to warm as spring flowers popped up from the snow, and the two of them went to a local market for the last of the winter strawberries. Yahaba was poking through the fruits, trying to find the best ones, and had sent Kyoutani to go find a basket for him to put them in.

Someone beside him said in a sharply accented voice, “Are you dating him?”

Yahaba blinked, and looked up to see a lanky dark-haired man watching him. He had a long, straight nose and pouting lips, with deep set, bright blue eyes. “Excuse me?”

The man jerked his chin in the direction of the front of the store where Kyoutani had vanished. “Him. The puppy dog. Are you dating?”

“…Yes,” Yahaba said, squinting at him. “Who are you and why do you care?”

The man smiled, revealing teeth so white and straight it made his face look strange, and extended a hand. “Oh, I’m Matt.” He didn't _explain_ , as if he knew that he'd made it so that he didn't _have to_ explain.

Yahaba grit his teeth to not spit on him. He glanced at Matt’s hand, then clutched at his bundle of strawberries. It didn’t seem to phase Matt —Mateo, Yahaba still thought it was a stupid fucking name — who simply shrugged and plucked a strawberry from his hand to eat it. Yahaba glowered.

“So, _are_ you dating?”

Yahaba managed to growl out through his clenched jaw, “Yes.”

Matt’s smile widened. “He’s really weird, isn’t he?”

Yahaba pressed his teeth together so hard it hurt.

“I mean,” he continued, “it took so long for me to teach him — oh.”

Yahaba whipped around to see Kyoutani at the edge of the aisle, basket in hand, staring at them. “Don’t speak to him,” Yahaba snapped at Matt, before turning to walk away.

He heard Matt step after him and say into his ear, too close, “It’s pathetic the way he clings to you after, isn’t it? I hated it. If I were you, I’d kick that puppy to the curb before it gets too attached.”

When he had been a kid, Yahaba had taken exactly one taekwondo class, because his best friend at the time had loved it. He’d learned how to hit something, and he’d learned that one should never fight unless defending themselves. He’d learned that violence is never the answer.

But sometimes.

His friend had continued to learn to fight even as Yahaba molded his muscles to graceful dancing. They’d taught each other a few things, and Yahaba had been particularly good at what was called a _roundhouse kick_. He’d liked the name, and he had the balance and the strength to pull off the move without much practice.

So, even though he paused and took two deep, calming breaths, he found that his body moved of its own accord. He glanced over his shoulder, then turned and said, “Hey, asshole.” He lashed out with his foot, smashing it with a perfunctory _smash_ into the side of Matt’s face.

The man didn’t even cry out, but he fell against the strawberry display and crumpled to the floor.Yahaba raised his leg again, ready to drive his heel into his belly, when suddenly Kyoutani was there, tugging him back with firm fingers around his arm.

“Put these down,” Kyoutani said, hurried, taking the strawberries from his hands and dumping them back onto the display. His fingers circled Yahaba’s wrist and pulled him out of the shop so fast Yahaba barely had time to calm himself down.

“Oh my god,” Kyoutani was muttering, pulling him along, then stopping and pushing Yahaba into a tiny alcove where they’d be out of pedestrian traffic. “You—” He stared at Yahaba, wide eyed and stunned.

Yahaba looked back at him, sniffing in aggravation. “ _That’s_ Matt? He looked like a —” but he couldn’t think of anything to describe how _slimy_ Matt seemed.

“You _kicked him_ ,” Kyoutani said. “In the _face_.”

“What?” Yahaba frowned at him. “Well, yeah. Obviously.”

Kyoutani stared at him for a long, quiet moment. He looked like his brain had stopped working.

“Are… are you mad?” Yahaba asked, seeming to realize that maybe he’d gone too far.

But Kyoutani’s body jerked, as if struck, and he threw his arms around Yahaba’s neck and pulled him into a rib crushing hug. “Was amazing,” he said. “I think I’m in love.”

Yahaba blinked, but hugged him back, nuzzling into his hair. “Me too, Ken, me too.”

 

* * *

 

Yahaba turned the knob of Kyoutani’s apartment door, only to be knocked back as he found it locked. Kyoutani never locked the door when he knew he was coming over. Yahaba hadn’t _knocked_ since… the first month? It had been forever. He wondered the reason even as he knocked — three quick raps. “Ken? It’s me.”

Kyoutani opened the door _just enough_ so that he could slip out into the hallway. “Hey,” he said, leaning forward and kissing him. “How was your day?”

Yahaba squinted at him, glancing up and down the grimy hallway. “Fine. Would be better if we could go inside.”

Kyoutani nodded, taking his school bag from him and saying, “Okay. But close your eyes.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Close your eyes. Just do it.”

Yahaba knew that Kyoutani wouldn’t tell him anymore if he had _plans_ , so Yahaba dutifully closed his eyes and allowed Kyoutani to carefully steer him into the apartment. He walked Yahaba to the living room and said, “Okay, get on your knees.”

Yahaba breathed out a sigh. “Ken, I know I said we’d try something fun tonight but can I please eat dinner first? I’ve been in class all day and —”

“Not like— It’s not — ugh,” Kyoutani huffed, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Not like that. Just do it, come on. Keep your eyes closed.” He helped Yahaba to kneel, then said, “Okay now crawl forward.”

“This somehow seems kinky but I can’t figure out—”

“Oh my _god,_ Shigeru, just fucking… please?”

Yahaba smiled to himself and moved forward cautiously on his hands and knees. He felt something brush his head and ducked, and kept crawling until Kyoutani told him to stop. The air felt heavier than before, thicker, as if he was under a big blanket.

“Okay, sit down.”

Yahaba patted around himself, finding cushions, and flopped down, tucking his legs under him. “What’s going on?”

“Hush,” Kyoutani said, sounding close in front of him. He sat befuddled and quiet, twiddling his thumbs while he waited.

There was a shuffle of cloth, and Yahaba heard the rearranging of the cushions and Kyoutani muttering, “Is that everything… think so…” And then he said, “Okay, open your eyes.”

Yahaba smiled, but when he opened his eyes his mouth fell open in shock. His brain shuddered to a stop, full-stop, as he gazed around. They were in a patched rainbow tent held up by chairs and poles that Kyoutani must have scrounged from somewhere. There was some sort of spinning light just on top of it, which spun, and threw the colors of the tent across their faces. It was magical, the way the pigments and colors of the world seemed to come alive. Even the very air seemed to glow.

There were cushions all around, all colors of the rainbow, some of them with glittering fronts that Yahaba ran his fingers across to make them change color. He felt his smile pulling at his face. “This,” he stared, then had to stop to clear his throat of emotion. “Ken, this is beautiful.”

Kyoutani, who had been slumped and nervously watching him, sat up and beamed, his smile and the soft pink blush across his nose were the best sights of all. “I thought you’d like it. Do you know how hard it is to find a _rainbow_ tent?”

Yahaba giggled, running his hands over the glittering pillows. “How’d you do this? What’s that light?”

“A spinning light I st—…borrowed from the club. I’ll take it back later.” He waved a dismissive hand.

“But —” Yahaba laughed, his chest feeling as light as if he were floating. He was giddy, his fingers tingling. “I don’t… but why? What’s all this for?”

Kyoutani reached out and took his hands, holding them in his own and looking suddenly shy. “It’s not _for_ anything.” He paused, seeming to think really hard for a moment, his eyes darting back and forth as if reading something in his mind. Yahaba thought he was trying to remember the holidays on the calendar. “It’s just… it’s for…” He squeezed Yahaba’s hands. “It’s for I Love You day.”

Yahaba laughed, ducking his head to hide his smile. “Oh my god. You’re ridiculous and I love you.”

Kyoutani beamed, and leaned close to kiss him. “There’s one more thing.” He reached behind him and pulled out a pure white box with silvery ribbons.

“Ken…” Yahaba whispered, seeing the size of the thing. “What’d you do?”

Kyoutani motioned to the box. “Open it.”

He pulled the ribbons off and slid the lid off, then gasped at the plethora of things inside. A large collection of Copic markers — too many, those were damn expensive — a vibrant set of Gouache watercolor tubes, a large pack of color pastels, a charcoal set, a brand new sketchbook, a set of small brushes, and a collection of body paints. He stared at all of them, the sheer amount of the items boggling his mind.

“Oh my god,” he said softly, “this is all so…” _expensive, wonderful, too much._

Kyoutani peeked into the box. “I went to the art store that’s on the other side of the city—you know that one?— and I didn’t know what brands were good so… I just picked a bunch of things that were pretty.”

The image of Kyoutani wandering around their local art store— which had shelves up to the ceiling and packed so full of things that the shelves groaned if you stepped wrong— made Yahaba’s chest all warm and fuzzy. “I still don’t understand… what brought this on?”

Kyoutani shrugged. “I remembered… what you said about the colors. And, especially after the gallery, and how well that went, I wanted to make sure you knew that the colors loved you, too.”

Yahaba stared at him, everything inside him swirling in a cacophony of color just like the air around them. He reached up, cupping Kyoutani’s face in his hand and pulled him over to kiss him. It was a long, slow kiss, and they’d kissed enough now that it was so much more than a kiss. He knew Kyoutani’s lips better than his own, and knew that he liked it when he pulled his bottom lip between his own, liked when he sighed and when he held his head and guided the direction of their kiss.

His mouth was just as warm as the first time they’d kissed, but instead of the hungry, bubbling desire it was a slow moving, warm flower that bloomed between them. Yahaba touched their foreheads together after the kiss, their breath warm and close even as the tent sagged around them.

“You’re so thoughtful,” he said, smiling.

Kyoutani snorted. “Don’t tell anyone.”

Yahaba laughed and gave him a quick kiss again before he pulled away to pull out the body paints. “These are interesting.”

Kyoutani chuckled, grazing his knuckles over Kyoutani’s arm. “I thought we could …” he trailed off as Yahaba opened the red tube and put some on his finger.

“Take your shirt off.” When Kyoutani did, Yahaba reached over and smeared a little red heart over his chest. “Here,” Yahaba said, handing him the tube of red. He spent a moment trying to tear open the package for the other colors (blue, green, yellow, white, black — very basic) and set them between them.

“I can’t draw,” Kyoutani said, squeezing some out onto his finger anyway.

“That’s okay.” Yahaba took out the blue and touched some to his finger. Then he pressed their fingers together, swirling them around. “Purple,” he said, beaming.

Kyoutani looked surprised, as if he didn’t know the beauty of mixing colors. “Ohh.”

“Here,” Yahaba kissed him again. “Lay down.”

He did, spreading out on the cushions while Yahaba straddled his hips. He spread the smeared purple on the inside of his wrist for safekeeping, then pulled out one of the tiny brushes. He spent several minutes making a palette rainbow on the inside of his arm. Kyoutani sat on his elbows and watched curiously as he took smears of red and yellow and white to make orange, and made more purple, some pink. He looked mystified as Yahaba mixed them. “What?” he asked, amused at Kyoutani’s childlike wonder.

“It’s just interesting,” Kyoutani said.

“Did you never mix colors in grade school?” Yahaba picked up the other brush and dipped it in the yellow, then painted around the inside rim of the red heart with it.

“Not like this.” He twitched his hips, and Yahaba giggled.

He said, “Stop it, you’ll mess me up.” He swiped the yellow off in streaks on Kyoutani’s ribs then put orange on the brush and painted around the outside of the red heart. Kyoutani’s half smile stayed on his face as he watched Yahaba finish the rainbow heart, so it looked like it was pulsating.

“Is that all?” Kyoutani asked. He had the rainbow on his chest, and streaks on his side, but so much of his skin was still clean and Yahaba’s fingers itched to cover him in color. “Wait, take your shirt off, too.”

“I’ve got paint all over my arm.”

“Do it carefully, then.” He tugged on Yahaba’s shirt and, with much cursing, they managed to get it off without displacing or smearing the colors on his arm.

“There, you baby, happy now?” Yahaba grinned at him, settling back over his hips. He leaned down and painted a quick, lovely flower just under the heart. The paint from all the other colors swirled through the petals.

Kyoutani settled back on the cushions, his hand reaching up to lay his palm on Yahaba’s side for comfort. “Yes.”

He was quiet while Yahaba painted his stomach blue and black, making a night sky onto which he painted imaginary planets: purple and pink and blue surfaces, the ring around them bright as the sun. Kyoutani lay silent and still through this process, mostly with his eyes closed and looking relaxed, but every now and then he’d open his eyes to watch Yahaba paint, or ask why he was doing a pink planet or what those little white dots were.

“They’re stars, silly,” Yahaba told him. He sat back, studying his work. He liked it. The sky looked deep and infinite, the planets popped in the foreground, some small and some big, but his favorite was over Kyoutani’s belly button, which he’d _giggled_ through the painting of.

“My turn?” Kyoutani asked, sitting up so he could look at his chest.

“Look, there’s still a lot of skin left.” Yahaba laughed, running the handle of the brush over his thickly muscled arms.

Kyoutani rolled his eyes a little, and took the brush from him. “My turn.”

“Thought you said you couldn’t draw.”

“Hush.” Kyoutani sat up, putting pink on the brush and sliding it over his nipple.

The paint was warm from his own body heat, but Kyoutani’s eyes were focused, even as he painstakingly did little swirls around his chest. Yahaba watched with a smile as he drew a lopsided puppy face with a big red tongue. And when Yahaba laughed at how uneven the ears were Kyoutani poked a big smear of red onto his cheek.

“You laughin’ at me?” he asked, pretending to be angry.

Yahaba was giggling. “No, of course not.”

“I think you are.” Kyoutani touched his nose with it and Yahaba shrieked a laugh, pulling away. Kyoutani slipped his fingers behind his head and pulled him down for another kiss, even though Yahaba protested and squirmed.

When he managed to have his mouth to himself he said, “You’re gonna mess up the paint…”

“You can do it again,” Kyoutani told him, and rocked his hips upwards. He pulled Yahaba down on top of him, wrapping his arms around his back and cupping his head so Yahaba had no choice but to melt against him. The paint was so thick on Kyoutani’s stomach it wasn’t dry yet, and it slathered across Yahaba’s skin in streaks. Kyoutani pushed his fingers through the makeshift palette and slid his fingers across Yahaba’s throat, spreading and mixing all the colors.

Yahaba was dizzy with the intensity of their kiss. Kyoutani had learned every place that made him into a puddle, and took every opportunity to use his knowledge. “Can—” he started, but Kyoutani nudged his face aside to suck a kiss on his pulse, making Yahaba gasp and lose his words.

Kyoutani pushed his hands down over his back, and slipped into his pants. “Take these off.”

“Only if you do, too,” Yahaba said, panting a little. They separated, with the sucking sound of their skin and paint sticking together making them both laugh. It was a fumbling, muttering few minutes while they stripped, smearing paint all over. Kyoutani asking once they were free of clothing, “Wait is this shit gonna hurt our dicks?”

Yahaba answered, “If anything starts to burn just shout and we'll go shower,” before dropping on top of him and kissing him again.

They kissed like they’d never see each other again, almost desperately — Kyoutani swiping his tongue across Yahaba’s teeth, Yahaba stroking his fingers across Kyoutani’s belly, slipping down through the dark, fine pubic hair to curl around his cock, and Kyoutani groaning into his mouth.

They were panting against each other's skin, and a fine sheen of sweat shimmered across Kyoutani’s chest. Yahaba felt droplets slide down the back of his neck and temple. He said, “It’s fucking hot in here.”

“Pussy.”

Yahaba smacked his chest, sitting up. “Lets go rinse off and move somewhere where it’s not boiling hot.” As he slid off and turned to crawl out of the tent Kyoutani grabbed a handful of his ass and wrestled him to the floor so they could roll around on the floor of the tent and make out like hormone-fueled teenagers.

They rinsed off in a warm shower, the colors swirling around their feet. Kyoutani’s hands never left Yahaba’s skin, wiping the colors away from his arm and following his fingers with his mouth in lingering kisses that left Yahaba shivering with desire. “Come on,” he said, desperate, “come on, come on.”

They rushed to dry off, still smearing the stuck bits of paint, but they stumbled to the bed, wrapped around one another, and fell onto the mattress. “Let me get…”

“Hurry.”

Kyoutani dug around in the bedside table and just as Yahaba was about to sit up to turn over—because why not, he knew Kyoutani liked to see the way his muscles in his back jumped, and it allowed him to press his face into the sheets to get Kyoutani everywhere, even in his lungs —

but with his clean hand Kyoutani grabbed his wrist. “No, don’t. I want to see your face.”

Yahaba felt his cheeks flush, and he leaned back on his elbows. “…Oh.” He bit his lip and slid backwards, letting Kyoutani kiss down his belly and slide his nose across the inside of his thigh while he carefully, thoughtfully, worked him open with his fingers. The entire time he kept his mouth working, dragging his tongue over the crease of his hip and across his belly, then blowing gently with his breath so Yahaba shivered and moaned and clutched at his hair.

“Kentarou, please,” Yahaba moaned, his stomach clenching.

“Shhh,” Kyoutani whispered against his skin, nosing his cock, twisting and _spreading_ his fingers. “Let me …” He breathed on Yahaba’s cock, dragging the flat of his tongue up the underside of it.

Yahaba’s vision went blurry, and he closed his eyes, trying to breathe even as his body tightened and curled. Kyoutani’s fingers were deep inside him, maddening, massaging him where he needed it the most until he nearly wept, overwhelmed with the sensations inside him. Kyoutani’s mouth was all over him, sucking little marks into his skin until Yahaba was shaking and on the verge of orgasm.

“Baby,” Yahaba muttered, tongue almost too heavy for words, tugging at Kyoutani’s hair. “Please, I _need_ you.”

Kyoutani grazed his teeth across his thigh, and kissed his way up Yahaba’s belly, chest, throat, and finally his mouth. He gripped Yahaba’s knees and pulled his legs up — and he’d learned that Yahaba was extremely flexible, even for a dancer, double jointed in the hips, so he pushed his toes to the mattress above his head as he slid inside in one quick thrust.

Yahaba screamed a short little moan, the feel of Kyoutani inside him was perfect and familiar, well-beloved, and his body responded by throwing itself over the edge of pleasure. He knew he was being overly loud, but he didn’t care, couldn’t hear anything but the pounding of his heartbeat and Kyoutani’s soft grunts in his ears. His body clenched, his toes curling, and his hands fisting in Kyoutani’s hair as he pulled him down for a messy, dirty kiss that Yahaba moaned through.

Kyoutani never stopped moving, rolling his hips in short, quick thrusts that Yahaba liked best. “God, I could watch you come forever,” he whispered against his lips, his own arms shaking from holding himself up.

“Keep doing that and you will,” Yahaba told him in a broken, desperate voice, because he was still shaking, his body tingling all over, little fireworks bursting along his nerves.

“Ah, shit,” Kyoutani whispered in response, dropping his head even as Yahaba hooked his ankles behind Kyoutani’s shoulders, holding their bodies together.

“Ken,” Yahaba gasped as Kyoutani gripped his hip, raising his body a little for a better angle. “God, you’re so —” he panted, eyelids fluttering, “—so deep, can you feel—”

Kyoutani was nodding his head, his own eyes pinched closed. “So good inside you,” he muttered, groaning as Yahaba tugged on his hair to turn his head so they could kiss again. They were both hot all over, breathing each other’s breath, chest to leg to chest.

“I love you,” Yahaba moaned into his mouth, taking a moment to suck the tip of Kyoutani’s tongue.

“God!” Kyoutani groaned, his hips rocking harder, knocking the breath out of both of them. The way they fit together was comfortable, and perfect, and Yahaba shifted himself so he could roll his stomach, rocking with him.

“I love you,” Yahaba said again, stroking his hair, one hand skittering down across his back. The angle was weird, his arm having to move around his own leg, and Kyoutani’s broad shoulders, but Kyoutani rolled his spine into his hand, and his breath stuttered out, gasping. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” Yahaba chanted between peppering kisses anywhere he could reach, clutching his entire body around him.

Kyoutani’s entire body tensed, and he stilled, spilling himself with a little moan. Yahaba smiled against his skin, kissing his ear, his cheek, his throat, both of them panting into the other’s skin. Yahaba shifted his legs, sliding them down to wrap around Kyoutani’s hips more comfortably, letting himself breathe deeper, more full breaths that made his belly happy. Kyoutani slumped into him, boneless, heaving.

“Sorry,” he muttered, kissing Yahaba’s throat. “Just gimme a sec…”

Yahaba laughed softly, breathless himself. He pet his hand over Kyoutani’s hair. “No rush, I like you on top of me.”

Kyoutani chuckled, but sat up, pulling away. He flopped beside him and pulled Yahaba against his chest in a hug. “So you liked it?”

“What,” Yahaba laughed, “the sex or the tent?”

Kyoutani traced his fingers up and down Yahaba’s spine, so lightly it made goose-flesh rise along his skin. “Both.”

“I loved everything. I’ll fill the sketchbook with memories of us. Then you can have it.”

He turned Yahaba’s face up so he could kiss him, sweet and slow. “That’d be wonderful. The things I got? Were they okay?”

Yahaba snuggled closer, suddenly overwhelmed with the need for sleep. “You picked very well. I really like all the brands. And those body paints — perfect. We should use them and get more.”

Kyoutani chuckled, tracing his lips over Yahaba’s eyelids. “You falling asleep on me?”

“No,” Yahaba lied, tilting his face up. They kissed again, Kyoutani working his mouth open and tracing his tongue, and they kissed for so long that Yahaba thought he might have dozed off, still nibbling at Kyoutani’s lower lip and feeling the rumble of his pleasure under his hand.

“Stay awake,” Kyoutani whispered, pulling him on top of him.

“…can’t,” Yahaba mumbled, laying across his chest, his mind fuzzy and his entire body warm.

“I want you…”

“God, you’re a monster,” Yahaba said, laughing softly, but spreading his legs a little as Kyoutani’s hands travelled down to cup his ass.

“You knew that from day one.” He kissed Yahaba’s shoulder. “Just one more time?”

Yahaba groaned, pressing back against his hands. “Don’t make me do anything. You can have your way with me but I might fall asleep.”

Kyoutani laughed, taking his skin between his teeth. “That’s okay.”

“Wait,” Yahaba said, turning his head away. “We didn’t even eat dinner—ouch!”

Kyoutani bit him again, a little harder as he rocked his hips up. “I’ll eat _you_.”

“You savage!”

Kyoutani rolled them over, reaching back for another condom, not needing to break their kiss. “One more time and I’ll go get you those gross salmon balls you like.”

Yahaba hummed happily, relaxing into the sheets. He would never actually say _no_ to another orgasm, and he was sure Kyoutani knew his body well enough to make that happen. “And sushi? I’m feeling some fresh sushi.”

“Sure, sure,” Kyoutani said, distracted, as he moved between Yahaba’s legs. “Anything for you.”

This time, it was even slower, Kyoutani took his time and Yahaba stretched out under him, floating in a happy, sexed-out bliss as Kyoutani made love to him. And when his orgasm rolled over him it was quick, and surprising, and he clenched and bucked up around Kyoutani’s body until he pressed him back to the mattress, holding him still while he fucked him through it. And Yahaba sobbed a little, clutching at his shoulders, his ribs, his hips, anywhere he can reach. Maybe he came again or maybe his orgasm just changed, moving from a wildfire to a tsunami, drowning him in a tingling, hot-cold miracle.

And after Kyoutani groaned out his own pleasure, he left Yahaba to nap while he went out and got dinner for them. They ate in the rainbow tent while Yahaba tested out each of the new things that Kyoutani had gifted him, explaining how he’d use each of them for different things. Then he sketched ducklings, and seashells, and their reading nook in the library, and the pier where they’d spent so much time pointing out the shapes of clouds to one another. He drew Kyoutani’s face at the height of pleasure, and then tried to draw his own as Kyoutani whispered in his ear what _he_ looked like until Kyoutani dappled kisses down his back just to taste his skin and Yahaba took his face in his hands to taste the curry on his lips.

That night, after they’d managed to not break anything putting away the tent, after they’d taken a real shower (separately, so they didn’t have to start the process all over), they were curled up in bed together, Yahaba half on top of him so he could feel their hearts beating together and bury his nose in the soft smelling place just under his ear. He was almost asleep, his body exhausted, his brain already clutching at dreams which he knew would be full of every color Kyoutani had given him. Kyoutani’s fingers played with the damp hair at the back of his head, gentle and careful to not pull his hair.

Yahaba knew that Kyoutani showed his love in actions rather than words, as denoted by every time he brought Yahaba gifts or kissed him unprompted, or would curl his fingers over the back of his neck to rub his muscles when he’d been bending over a textbook or his laptop or a sketchbook all day. He knew Kyoutani loved him by the way he would rearrange himself when Yahaba walked into a room, the way he watched him, and would orient himself to Yahaba like a planet orbiting a star. He knew Kyoutani loved him because he’d set up a tent and given him all the colors of the world and made love to him every opportunity he had over the past eleven months.

Kyoutani pressed a kiss to his temple and whispered, “You make me so very happy… I know I’m bad at saying it aloud…” His voice trembled, and Yahaba thought he felt his heart skip a beat. “...but you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I love you with my whole heart.”

And Yahaba smiled against his throat, melting into him, too sleepy to actually say, _I know, puppy, I know_ but hoping that Kyoutani could feel it in the way he breathed out a sleepy, contented sigh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! I hope you guys enjoyed it! :) It was my first time writing KyouHaba but now I'm completely in love <3


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